Niamey / Paris, February 20, 2022 – On Friday afternoon, February 18, an airstrike hit a hamlet located in the district of Madarounfa, in southern Niger, killing at least 12 people, including 4 children, and 16 injured, according to reports. local sources.
The MSF teams working in the Madarounfa district hospital provided support to the Ministry of Health teams, in particular by providing medical equipment to take care of 7 injured children.
One of these children died shortly after arriving at Madarounfa district hospital. Two others died after being transferred to the Maradi regional hospital.
A fourth child, aged 20 months, died during the bombardment, according to survivors. Six other people, adults, are said to have died at the scene of the bombardment, and two others after being transferred to Maradi hospital.
According to the survivors, a fighter plane first flew over the hamlet of Nachambé, near the village of Garin Kaoura, in the district of Madarounfa, located a few kilometers from the Nigerian border, and inhabited by people belonging to the ethnic group pehl. He would then have flown over the hamlet again, dropping ammunition. It would be a Nigerian army plane pursuing armed men from a border village who had taken shelter in the village school.
“This is a horrible event, unprecedented in the Madarounfa region, explains Dr. Souley Harouna, MSF representative in Niger. The teams report that the injured children suffered from open fractures and various post-traumatic wounds and injuries. We carried out first aid before transferring them to Maradi hospital, but some of the injured did not survive”.
MSF operates in the Maradi region, focusing its efforts on caring for children suffering from acute malnutrition and other early childhood illnesses. Nearly 30,000 children were hospitalized in the four hospitals supported by MSF in the Maradi region in 2021.
MSF is also providing relief to people in the border state of Katsina, Nigeria.
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