DAKAR, Senegal (AP) – Airstrike targets an armed group in the northwest Nigeria has killed at least 10 civilians by mistake, the West African country'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, the Nigerian defense spokesman, told journalists at press conference.
On Thursday, the Sokoto state government said the air force launched an airstrike on the villagers in the early hours of Wednesday in an attempt to drive the insurgents out of the area.
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However, on Friday, Buba said only that the Lakurawa insurgents were hit directly by weapons and that the civilians died from a “secondary explosion”.
The Lakurawa insurgent group began invading Africa's most populous country after a wave of coups strained 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 attempted to impose strict Islamic laws across the border communities of the French countries.
Airstrikes on civilians occur frequently in the country. Last year, anyway 85 civilians were killed when an army drone attack mistakenly targeted a religious gathering in northwest Nigeria.
Since 2017, around 400 civilians have been killed by accidental strikes by the military, according to the Lagos-based security company SBM Intelligence.
Before the Lakurawa rebellion, Nigeria had been fighting Boko Haram in the north-east of the country. Boko Haram launched an attack in 2009 to establish his radical interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the region.
The group has since branched out into various groups, together accounting for the deaths of at least 35,000 people and the displacement of over 2 million, as well as a humanitarian crisis with millions of people in dire need of foreign aid.
