ABUJA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross is increasing aid for the Lake Chad region of Africa, making the region the third most important in the world for the group, its president said on Thursday.
Red Cross programmes in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria will be expanded as the region's governments cope with the effects of a campaign against the Islamist jihadi group Boko Haram.
"The combined volume of those activities in Lake Chad are today 110 million Swiss francs (75.2 million pounds), which makes this region the third most important humanitarian activity of ICRC worldwide, Just after Syria and South Sudan," Peter Maurer, president of ICRC, said at a press conference during his first official visit to Nigeria.
The six-year insurgency waged by Boko Haram to carve out an Islamist state in Nigeria's northeast has internally displaced around 1.5 million people. Thousands were killed last year in an unprecedented land grab by the militant group.
(Reporting By Julia Payne; Editing by Larry King)
