Airstrike on insurgents mistakenly killed 10 civilians, Nigerian military says

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — An airstrike targeting an armed group in northwestern Nigeria mistakenly killed at least 10 civilians, the West African nation’s military said Friday.

The villagers were killed on Christmas Day when the air force targeted a logistics base of the Lakurawa insurgent group in the Silame area of Sokoto state, Edward Buba, Nigerian defense spokesperson, told journalists at a press conference.

On Thursday, the Sokoto state government said the air force mistakenly shelled the villagers in the early hours of Wednesday in an attempt to dislodge the insurgents from the area.

However, on Friday, Buba said only that the Lakurawa insurgents were directly hit by munitions and that the civilians died from “secondary explosions.”

The Lakurawa insurgent group began infiltrating Africa’s most populous country following a wave of coups that disrupted Nigeria’s relations with neighboring Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, hurting their ability to cooperate on transnational threats.

Initially gaining local support by helping communities defend themselves against armed cattle rustlers, the group later sought to impose strict Islamic laws across border communities of the French-speaking countries.

Airstrikes on civilians happen frequently in the country. Last year, at least 85 civilians were killed when an army drone attack erroneously targeted a religious gathering in northwest Nigeria.

Since 2017, some 400 civilians have been killed by such accidental strikes by the military, according to the Lagos-based SBM Intelligence security firm.

Before the Lakurawa insurgents, Nigeria had been battling Boko Haram in the northeastern part of the country. Boko Haram launched an insurgency in 2009 to establish its radical interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the region.

The group has since splintered into different factions, together accounting for the deaths of at least 35,000 people and the displacement of more than 2 million, as well as a humanitarian crisis with millions of people in dire need of foreign aid.