A senior UN official confirmed to our correspondent on Tuesday that the top diplomat and other UN officials have left Maiduguri on an assessment tour of the village.
“We are on our way to the community for an assessment of the scene with Governor Zulum. There would be a press briefing in Maiduguri after the visit,” the official explained.
This is happening as the UN clarified that the victims of the attack were not up to 110 as it earlier claimed in a statement on Sunday.
The statement had quoted Kallon as stating that 110 farmers were killed in the attack but the Nigerian Army insisted that the bodies of the victims recovered from the farm were 43.
In a new release on Monday, the UN retracted its earlier claim, describing it as inaccurate.
It said the earlier number quoted by Mr Kallon “was not correctly sourced.”
The new statement said “tens of civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded in this attack.”
The statement signed by the Head of Public Information, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Nigeria, Eve Sabbagh, read, “Please note the number of 110 civilians killed on Saturday’s attack is an unconfirmed number and the correct version of the statement by the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator is the one published yesterday on Reliefweb and used on OCHA Nigeria’s Twitter account.”
Governor Babagana Zulum and a delegation of United Nations officials led by the head of the UN System in Nigeria, Edward Kallon, are on their way to Zabarmari community where Boko Haram killed over 43 rice farmers on Saturday.
A senior UN official confirmed to our correspondent on Tuesday that the top diplomat and other UN officials have left Maiduguri on an assessment tour of the village.
“We are on our way to the community for an assessment of the scene with Governor Zulum. There would be a press briefing in Maiduguri after the visit,” the official explained.
This is happening as the UN clarified that the victims of the attack were not up to 110 as it earlier claimed in a statement on Sunday.
The statement had quoted Kallon as stating that 110 farmers were killed in the attack but the Nigerian Army insisted that the bodies of the victims recovered from the farm were 43.
In a new release on Monday, the UN retracted its earlier claim, describing it as inaccurate.
It said the earlier number quoted by Mr Kallon “was not correctly sourced.”
The new statement said “tens of civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded in this attack.”
The statement signed by the Head of Public Information, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Nigeria, Eve Sabbagh, read, “Please note the number of 110 civilians killed on Saturday’s attack is an unconfirmed number and the correct version of the statement by the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator is the one published yesterday on Reliefweb and used on OCHA Nigeria’s Twitter account.”
