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Nigeria’s president has called for an investigation into the killing of at least 85 people in what appeared to be an errant drone strike on a northern village that was believed to have been carried out by the country’s armed forces.
President Bola Tinubu expressed sympathy with victims of Sunday’s “bombing mishap” in the village of Tudun Biri, in Kaduna state, and ordered a “thorough and full-fledged investigation into the incident”.
He described the attack as “unfortunate, disturbing and painful” and expressed “indignation and grief over the tragic loss of Nigerian lives”.
Kaduna state’s governor said villagers celebrating the Muslim festivities of Maulud had been “mistakenly killed and many others injured following a military drone attack targeting terrorists and bandits”, while the state emergency management agency said on Tuesday that at least 85 people had died during the attack.
The state’s commissioner for internal security and home affairs claimed that a division of the Nigerian army had admitted to the mistake. “The General Officer Commanding 1 Division Nigerian Army, Maj-Gen Valentine Okoro, explained that the Nigerian Army was on a routine mission against terrorists but inadvertently affected members of the community”, he said.
The Nigerian army has yet to comment on the incident and the country’s air force has denied any involvement in the deaths.
Danjuma Salisu, a survivor of the Tudun Biri attack, told the Reuters news agency that villagers first heard the sound of an aeroplane approaching, followed by a large blast. “It was a loud bang that left over 80 people dead and many of us injured,” he said from hospital.
Nigeria has been battling a more than decade-long insurgency against Islamist insurgents Boko Haram and more recently the Islamic State’s West Africa Province in the country’s north-east. The violence has spread further to states such as Kaduna, where roving gangs known locally as “bandits” sack villages, attack people and kidnap for ransom.
During the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari, Tinubu’s predecessor, an estimated 60,000 people were killed by terrorists, criminal gangs or the army, according to data compiled by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Nigeria’s armed forces, which are supported by the US, UK and other western governments, have been accused of numerous human rights violations, the use of excessive force and a lack of accountability.
The incident in Tudun Biri is not the first time a branch of Nigeria’s armed forces has been accused of inadvertently causing the deaths of people it was meant to protect.
In 2017, a Nigerian Air Force jet bombed a refugee camp in the town of Rann in Borno state, the centre of the Boko Haram crisis, after mistaking it for a terrorist enclave. More than 100 people were killed, including aid workers providing relief to displaced people.
A senior military official admitted at the time that the “grave mistake” had occurred because the air force had received the wrong co-ordinates. No one was charged in connection with the incident.
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