Not less than 85 people confirmed dead by Nigerian army drone attack, raising questions about such misfires.
More than 85 civilians has been confirmed dead when an army drone attack mistakenly targeted a religious gathering in northwest Nigeria, officials confirmed on Tuesday. The president has ordered a probe into the root cause of such deadly mistakes in Nigeria’s conflict zones.
Information from government officials said that the urgly incidents took place on Sunday night in Kaduna state’s Tudun Biri village while residents observed the Muslim holiday marking the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. According to government officials they said that it was “targeting at terrorists and bandits,”.
The National Emergency Management Agency said in a statement that 66 people were also injured in the attack. Eighty-five bodies, including that of children, women and the elderly, have been buried so far, as a search continues for any additional victims, the agency said.
During a visit to the village Tuesday, the Nigeria’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, apologized for the drone strike, he said it had been carried out “based on the observation of some tactics usually employed by bandits.”
“Unfortunately, the reports we got revealed it was innocent civilians that the drone conducted a strike on,” Lagbaja said.
according to the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence security firm, up to 400 civilians have been killed Since 2017, by airstrikes that the military said were targeting armed groups in the deadly security crisis in northern Nigeria,
in a statement Nigeria former vice president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, said “The incidence of miscalculated airstrikes is assuming a worrisome dimension in the country,” .
Nigerian President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has ordered “a thorough and full-fledged investigation into the incident.” However, such investigations and their outcomes are often shrouded in secrecy.
Nigeria’s military often conducts air raids as it fights the extremist violence and rebel attacks that have destabilized Nigeria’s north for more than a decade, often leaving civilian casualties in its wake, including in January when dozens were killed in Nasarawa state and in December 2022 when dozens also died in Zamfara state.
The spokesman for Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters, Maj. Gen. Edward Buba said in a statement on Tuesday that terror suspects often “deliberately embed themselves within civilian population centers,” though he wasn’t speaking specifically about Sunday’s holiday gathering.
Analysts have in the past raised concerns about the lack of collaboration among Nigerian security agencies as well as the absence of due diligence in some of their special operations in conflict zones.
The proliferation of drones within Nigerian security agencies has been a major source of concern such that “there is no guiding principle one when these can be used,” according to Kabir Adamu, the founder of Beacon Consulting, a security firm based in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. “The military sees itself as a little bit over and above civilian accountability as it were,” Adamu said.
In the incident in Nasarawa in January, when 39 people were killed, the Nigerian air force “provided little information and no justice” over the incident, Human Rights Watch said. Such incidents are enabled by a lack of punishment for erring officers or agencies, according to Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s director in Nigeria.
According to Sanusi, “The Nigerian military is taking lightly the lack of Penalties, stressing that the civilians they are supposed to protect are the ones paying the price of their incompetence and lack of due diligence,” .
