A Nigerian army drone strike accidentally killed and injured civilians celebrating a Muslim religious festival in a northwest village, local authorities, the army and a resident said on Monday.
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The army frequently uses airstrikes to combat bandit groups and jihadist rebels who have been active in the northeast and northwest of the country for 14 years.
There is no report yet on this bombing in Kaduna State, but a resident of the affected village said 30 people were killed in the attack on Sunday evening.
“Muslim believers celebrating Mawlid (the celebration of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, editor’s note) were accidentally killed and many others injured in a military drone strike targeting terrorists and bandits,” said Kaduna State Governor, Mr. Uba Sani.
Most of the victims were women and children, a local resident, Hassan Ma’aruf, told AFP by telephone, sharing images that he said showed the bodies of women and children. AFP could not immediately confirm their authenticity.
Dozens of injured people were taken to a hospital in Kaduna, state security commissioner Samuel Aruwan said in a statement, confirming that several others had been killed.
He said the army “inadvertently hit members of the community” during a routine operation against rebels.
“The Mawlid festival was taking place in the village last night when the gathering was bombed at around 9pm. Nobody expected such a tragedy. “We have identified 30 victims so far, most of them women and children,” said villager Hassan Ma’aruf.
Civilians have already been victims of bomb attacks by the Nigerian army in the past.
In September 2021, a military bombardment targeting jihadists in the Kwatar Daban Masara region of Lake Chad killed at least 20 fishermen and mistakenly injured several others.
In July 2019, 13 civilians were killed in an airstrike in Gajiganna village, 50 km from Maiduguri, the capital of northeastern Borno state, while attacking jihadists who had fled after the attack on a nearby base.
Two years earlier, in January 2017, at least 112 people were killed when a fighter jet hit a camp containing 40,000 people displaced by jihadist violence in the town of Rann, near the border with Cameroon.
In a report released six months later, the Nigerian army said the bombing was due to “the lack of proper marking of the area.”
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has made combating insecurity in Africa’s most populous country one of his priorities since taking office last May.
Gangs and bandit groups have been terrorizing parts of northwestern Nigeria for several years, carrying out raids on villages to kidnap residents for ransom. They operate from bases in forests spanning the northwestern states.
The jihadists, for their part, are continuing their war in the northwest of the country. In total, the conflict has left more than 40,000 people and 2 million displaced since 2009.