Refugee camp bombed in error
Scores killed as Nigerian fighter jet mistakes encampment for Boko Haram extremists
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — A Nigerian air force fighter jet on a mission against Boko Haram extremists mistakenly bombed a refugee camp Tuesday, killing more than 100 refugees and aid workers and wounding 200, a government official and doctors said.
Military commander Maj. Gen. Lucky Irabor confirmed an accidental bombardment in the northeastern town of Rann, near the border with Cameroon, saying “some” civilians were killed.
It was believed to be the first time Nigeria’s military has
acknowledged making such a mistake in a region where villagers have in the past reported civilian casualties in the near-daily bombings targeting the Islamist militants.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari expressed deep sadness and regret at “this regrettable operational mistake.”
A Borno state government official, who was helping to coordinate the evacuation of wounded from the remote area by helicopters, said more than 100 refugees and aid workers were among the dead. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Doctors Without Borders said its team based in Rann counted at least 52 bodies and was treating 200 wounded, many in critical condition, and the death toll was expected to rise — especially since there was little hope of evacuation until today.
“This large-scale attack on vulnerable people who have already fled from extreme violence is shocking and unacceptable,” said Jean-Clement Cabrol, the aid group’s director of operations.
The International Committee for the Red Cross said six workers with the Nigerian Red Cross were among the dead and 13 were wounded.
Gen. Irabor, theater commander for counterinsurgency operations in northeast Nigeria, said he ordered the mission based on information that Boko Haram insurgents were gathering in the area, along with geographic coordinates.
It was too early to say if a tactical error was made, he said, adding that the bombing would be investigated.
Villagers have previously reported civilian casualties in airstrikes on Boko Haram positions in northeastern Nigeria.
Some of the schoolgirls kidnapped by the insurgents in 2014 and freed last year have said three of their classmates were killed by air force bombardments, according to the freed girls’ parents. Of the nearly 300 schoolgirls who were abducted, 196 remain missing.
The bombings have helped drive Boko Haram out of many towns and villages and, according to Mr. Buhari, the insurgents’ last stronghold in the Sambisa Forest last month.
The bombing also came as the United States is considering selling the Nigerian government warplanes, despite objections from some officials in Congress over the military’s past record of human rights abuses.
Last year, Amnesty International reported that nearly 150 people, including children and babies, had died at the Nigerian military’s Giwa barracks in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, many of them of disease and hunger in overcrowded cells.
In Giwa and elsewhere in northeastern Nigeria, the military has often detained civilians who were once held by Boko Haram, accusing them of being sympathizers or “sleeper agents” for their former abductors.
Boko Haram’s 7-year-old Islamist uprising has killed more than 20,000 people and forced 2.6 million from their homes, creating the continent’s worst humanitarian crisis, with the United Nations warning some 5.1 million people face starvation.