The number of children forced to flee Boko Haram’s insurgency in Nigeria and neighbouring countries has reached 1.4 million, the U.N. children agency UNICEF said on Friday.
Around 500,000 were displaced in the last five months after a sharp rise in attacks by the Islamist jihadi group, it said.
The militants have been waging a six-year insurrection to establish an Islamist state in the northeast of Nigeria that has killed thousands and displaced 2.1 million people, most of whom are children.
According to a statement issued by UNICEF, nearly 1.2 million children in northern Nigeria alone have been forced to flee their homes. Over half of these are under the age of 5.
An additional 265,000 children have been uprooted in Cameroon, Chad and Niger,”
