UNITED NATIONS, July 15 (Xinhua) -- The World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) have been working with the Nigerian government to scale up assistance to reach some 724,000 people in desperate need, a UN spokesman told reporters here Friday.
"The agency has more than doubled the number of people it has been able to reach in the last six months," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.
"It remains very concerned about the rising number of people facing hunger," Dujarric said. "It warns that unless life-saving assistance is provided fast, hunger will only deepen during the current lean and rainy season."
The WFP needs 65 million U.S. dollars to continue providing life-saving assistance until the end of the year in north-eastern Nigeria, he said.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Thursday that UN agencies and partners were finalizing an operational plan to provide immediate assistance to at least 275,000 people living in 15 newly accessible military-controlled camps in Nigeria's Borno State.
They were also preparing for cross-border assistance from Cameroon into Banki, Nigeria, where 15,000 displaced people need urgent assistance.
In late June, UNICEF said that it has also identified 3,000 children who have become separated from their families and have started to register children with the aim of trying to trace their families.
From June 1 to June 15, the WFP provided assistance to more than 37,000 displaced people in these 11 sites, and 3,200 children received a malnutrition prevention ration.
Boko Haram insurgents have mounted several attacks in recent weeks, displacing tens of thousands of people in the conflict-hit regions of the Lake Chad Basin.
In Bosso area in the southeastern Niger, attacks displaced some 70,000 people. Assistance is being provided in the various sites where the displaced have settled.
