A victim of army drones attack receives treatment at a hospital. Photo / AP
A victim of army drones attack receives treatment at a hospital. Photo / AP
At least 85 civilians were killed when an army drone attack erroneously targeted a religious gathering in northwest Nigeria, officials confirmed on Tuesday, as the president ordered a probe into the latest in a series of such deadly mistakes in Nigeria’s conflict zones.
The strike took place on Sunday night in Kaduna state’s Tudun Biri village while residents observed the Muslim holiday marking Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, government officials said. The military believed it was “targeting terrorists and bandits”, officials said.
A victim of the army's drone attack receives treatment at a hospital in Kaduna, Nigeria. Photo / AP
At least 66 people were injured in the attack, the National Emergency Management Agency said. Eighty-five bodies, including of children, women and the elderly, have been buried so far, as a search continues for more victims, the agency said.
Nigeria’s army chief, Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja, apologised for the drone strike during a visit to the village on Tuesday, and said it had been carried out “based on the observation of some tactics usually employed by bandits”.
At least 66 people were injured in the attack, the National Emergency Management Agency said. Photo / AP
“Unfortunately, the reports we got revealed it was innocent civilians that the drone conducted a strike on,” Lagbaja said.
Since 2017, some 400 civilians have been killed by airstrikes that the military said were targeting armed groups in the deadly security crisis in the country’s north, according to the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence security firm.
“The incidence of miscalculated airstrikes is assuming a worrisome dimension in the country,” said Atiku Abubakar, Nigeria’s former vice-president and the main Opposition presidential candidate in this year’s election.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu 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 destabilised the country’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 last year when dozens died in Zamfara state.
Nigeria's army chief Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja (centre) and community leaders pray at the graveside where victims of an army drone attack were buried. Photo / AP
Major General Edward Buba, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters, said on Tuesday that terror suspects often “deliberately embed themselves within civilian population centres”, though he wasn’t speaking specifically about Sunday’s holiday gathering.
Analysts have previously 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.
A major concern has been the proliferation of drones within Nigerian security agencies, such that “there is no guiding principle on when these can be used”, says 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 were enabled by a lack of punishment for erring officers or agencies, said Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s director in Nigeria.
“The Nigerian military is taking lightly the lack of consequences ... and the civilians they are supposed to protect are the ones paying the price of their incompetence and lack of due diligence,” Sanusi said.
