Gunmen shoot dead staff member of Doctors Without Border inside public vehicle in Zamfara

Medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Border, has condemned the killing by gunmen of a nurse it employed in Zamfara State in northwest Nigeria, Reuters reported.

The organisation said its nurse, Mohammad Hassan, 37, was killed on October 2 when armed men opened fire on the public transport vehicle in which he was travelling.

“Mohammad’s tragic death is an example of the rising violence in North-West Nigeria that is deeply affecting the lives of the population and has driven thousands of people from their homes,” the organisation said on Twitter on Tuesday.

The whole of North-West Nigeria has been engulfed in crisis since late 2020, when gangs of bandits seeking ransoms or loot began a spate of mass abductions from schools and other violent attacks on villages and on people travelling by road.

Zamfara State, which is among the worst-hit states, has been under a telecoms blackout since early September, imposed by the authorities to disrupt coordination among the bandits and help the armed forces to tackle them.

MSF said it provided medical humanitarian assistance to the populations of the Anka, Gusau and Zurmi areas in Zamfara State. In Shinkafi, the town where Hassan was based, MSF teams run a 33-bed therapeutic feeding centre and an in-patient paediatric department at the local general hospital, it said.