An airstrike by the Nigerian Air Force targeting ‘bandits’ has killed seven children and wounded five others by mistake in Niger, a local governor told AFP on Sunday.
“There was a mistake with the Nigerian strikes on the border that resulted in victims on our territory in the village of Nachade” on Friday, said Chaibou Aboubacar, the governor of the Maradi region.
“The victims are 12 children, seven of them dead and five wounded.”
In Nigeria, villagers have in the past reported some civilian casualties in near-daily bombardments in Northern Nigeria.
In 2021, a military jet that came to repel an attack by Boko Haram dropped a bomb that landed in a compound where civilians were having child christening.
A fighter jet also on a mission against Boko Haram extremists in April 2021 mistakenly bombed men of the Nigerian Army, killing over 20 officers.
The soldiers who were reinforced from Ngandu village were said to be on their way to Mainok, headquarters of the Kaga Local Government Area of Borno state which was under attack by militants from the Islamic State-backed faction of Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), formerly known as Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād.
Some of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 and freed last year also said three of their classmates were killed by Air Force bombardments.
In June 2021, an offensive aerial bombardment the NAF Alpha jet carried out around Genu town in Niger State resulted in the killing of some wedding guests.
