"I saw bodies of children that had been cut in two" MSF staff's harrowing account of accidental bombing on IDP camp

A Medecins San Frontieres (MSF) field coordinator
was in Rann when a Nigerian military jet
mistakenly bombed a refugee camp while hunting
Boko Haram terrorists. This is his harrowing
account.
The first bomb fell at 12:30 p.m. and
landed just a few meters away from the
Red Cross office.
The plane circled back around, and it dropped a
second bomb five minutes later. I immediately
called the rest of the team on the radio, and they
reassured me that luckily none of them had been

injury.
We met up at the tents we had erected a few days
earlier. Dozens of wounded began to pour in, and
the flow of people continued for hours. There are
no words to describe the chaos. Some people
had broken bones and torn flesh; their intestines
hung down to the floor. I saw the bodies of
children that had been cut in two.
The tents were strewn with wounded, and there
was barely any room to move. Many people were
outside, lying on mats under the trees. There was
only one doctor and one nurse in our team, but
each of us did what we could. Even the drivers
helped us. We also had support from the Red
Cross staff and military nurses.
I did not see the plane, and I don’t know exactly
what type of bomb it was. We found small metal
slivers on the bodies.
What I saw was indescribable. In the space of one
hour, we counted 52 dead.
I think that our distributions of essential items
such as mats and blankets saved a lot of people.
Because they were queuing to collect them at the
time of the attack, they were not in the town
center and escaped the bombs.
The hardest thing for our team is the frustration
at not having had enough resources or medical
equipment to save more of the wounded. A dozen
people died in front of our eyes without receiving
the urgent medical care they so badly needed.
There used to be a hospital in Rann, but it was
damaged by fire last year and is not functional.
The town was left with no medical facilities.
After months of trying to access this highly
insecure area, MSF finally arrived on January 14.
We found that the people living in Rann had
nothing. The week before we got there, it was
reported that 21 people had died of causes linked
to malnutrition. The reason we were in Rann was
very clear—we were there to evaluate people’s
nutritional status and assess their needs,
including if they had access to enough safe
water. While there, we vaccinated children aged
between six months and 15 years and distributed
essential items.
We had to leave the tents at 6 p.m. for security
reasons. It was very hard for us to leave our
patients, but the Red Cross team had already
started to relieve the pressure on us and to take
over.
When I had a moment to myself, I went to the
cemetery where the burials had already started.
There were 30 new graves—sometimes mothers
and their young children were buried in the same
hole. It’s a tragedy.
I also visited the area where the bombs hit. They
had been dropped on houses. It’s
incomprehensible. I recognized the body of a
mother who had been at the MSF distribution that
morning. Her twins had been given packets of
therapeutic food paste since they were suffering
from malnutrition. Now I saw them crying,
pressing themselves against her inert body.
I can’t find the words.
What allows us to carry on after this terrible and
traumatizing experience is knowing that we did
everything we could despite not having enough
resources.
Three people from a private firm hired by MSF to
provide water and sanitation services in the camp
died in the bombing, and another was injured.
This is very hard for our team. We worked very
closely with them. All we could do for them was
to send their bodies back to their families.
What the survivors of the bombing have lived
through is so hard, so violent. Rann was their
safehaven. The army that was meant to protect
them bombed them instead. We have to remain
at their side.
Source: TIME Magazine