Tens of thousands of children in northeast Nigeria will die of malnutrition this year unless they receive treatment soon, the United Nations said on Friday after reaching areas of the country previously cut off from aid by Boko Haram violence, Reuters reported. "Improving security has enabled humanitarians to access areas that were previously cut off," Munir Safieldin, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria, said in a statement. "The conditions we are seeing there are devastating." More than a half a million people need urgent food aid, as the violence has hit farming, disrupted markets and driven up food prices, several U.N. agencies said in a joint statement. Almost 250,000 children under the age of five in Borno state will suffer from malnutrition this year, said Jean Gough, Nigeria representative for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF. "Unless we reach these children with treatment, one in five of them will die," she said. "We cannot allow that to happen."
