Top of the Morning: Scores Killed in Boko Haram Attack

Top stories from DAWNS Digest

Scores Killed in Boko Haram Attacks in Northern Nigeria

This is on top of a horrific massacre at a school last week. “Twin bomb blasts in the city of Maiduguri killed at least 46 people on Saturday evening while, around 50 km (30 miles) away, dozens of gunmen were razing a farming village, shooting dead another 39.The attacks will heap pressure on Jonathan, whose intensified military push to end the Islamist sect Boko Haram’s four-and-a-half-year-old insurgency has been running for almost a year. While the bloodshed has not diminished, the army had at least had some success in confining it to remote rural areas in recent months, so that the attack on a densely populated market area in Maiduguri will be seen as a setback. (Reuters http://reut.rs/1hypy0a)

Food Crisis Looming for CAR

Only a fraction of funds required for humanitarian relief have materialized. “A food crisis is looming in the Central African Republic after nearly a year of violence, a UN humanitarian official warned on Sunday. Funds pledged to help the crisis in January have not materialised, Abdou Dieng, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator said, with only one-fifth of the $500m promised at a donor conference in Brussels coming in to the country. “It is now that the humanitarian crisis will start to deepen,” Dieng said. “If we don’t pay attention, we will soon see people dying of hunger,” Dieng told the AFP news agency after visiting the market town of Bouar in the far west of the country the size of France” (Al Jazeerahttp://aje.me/1hyqu4G)