Nigerian army drone accidentally hits village in northwest of country: 85 people killed
A Nigerian army drone accidentally killed at least 85 civilians on Sunday in a village in Kaduna Statein northwest Nigeria, according to official sources, which constitutes one of the deadliest military bombings in the country.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday also ordered an investigation after the army admitted thatone of its drones targeting armed groups accidentally struck the village of Tudun Biriwhose inhabitants celebrated a Muslim festival.
The army did not give casualty figures, but residents said 85 people, many of them women and children, were killed.
“The North West Zonal Office has received information from local authorities that 85 bodies have been buried so far, while searches continue,” the National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) said in a statement.
NEMA said another 66 people were being treated in hospital, but emergency officials were still negotiating with community leaders to ease tensions so they could travel to the village.
Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly who were celebrating the Muslim festival of Mawlid, which commemorates the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.
“My aunt, my brother’s wife and her six children, the wives of my four brothers are among the dead. My elder brother’s family is dead, except for his infant child who survived,” he said. Idris Dahiru, a resident of the neighborhood, told AFP.
Nigeria’s armed forces often resort to airstrikes in their fight against bandit militias in the country’s northwest and northeast, where jihadists have been fighting for more than a decade.
This conflict has left more than 40,000 dead and two million displaced since 2009.
– “Indignation and grief” –
“President Tinubu describes the incident as very unfortunate, disturbing and painful, and expresses his outrage and sorrow at the tragic loss of Nigerian lives,” the presidency said in a statement.
The military said its drone was a routine mission that had “inadvertently impacted members of the community.”
She later said the villagers had been mistaken for an armed group in the area.
“Terrorists deliberately establish themselves in areas where civilian populations live so that they suffer the consequences of their atrocities,” the army said in a statement.
“The army considers every civilian death during operations a tragedy.”
Since taking office in May, Tinubu has said tackling insecurity is one of his main concerns as he seeks to attract more foreign investment to Africa’s most populous country. .
Militias have long terrorized parts of northwest Nigeria, operating from camps deep in forests and launching raids into villages to loot and kidnap residents for ransom.
In the northeast, jihadists have been pushed back from the territories they occupied at the height of the conflict, although they continue to fight in rural areas.
ADVERTISEMENTBombings by the Nigerian army have already accidentally affected civilians.
In September 2021, at least 20 fishermen were killed and several injured in an attack in Kwatar Daban Masara, on Lake Chad in the northeast of the country, when the army mistook them for fighters.
In January 2017, at least 112 people were killed when a fighter jet struck a camp housing 40,000 people displaced by jihadist violence in the town of Rann, near the border with Cameroon.
The Nigerian army blamed “the lack of proper marking of the area” in a report published six months later.
