WHAT IF IT WAS ISRAEL? Nigerian Military ‘Mistake’ Kills At Least 50 In Strike On Refugee Camp

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BAMAKO, Mali – The Nigerian military bombed a crowded refugee camp for people fleeing Islamist militants Tuesday, killing at least 50 people in what was described as a mistaken attack while battling Boko Haram fighters.

The bombardment occurred in the city of Rann, near the Cameroon border, one of places where more than 1 million victims of Boko Haram have fled in recent years as part of one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. More than 100 were injured.

Nigerian Gen. Lucky Irabor confirmed the strike, telling reporters it was accidental and that the death toll was still being assessed.

Teams from the aid group Doctors Without Borders “have seen 120 wounded and 50 dead following the bombing,” according to Tim Shenk, a spokesman for the organization, which is also known as Médecins Sans Frontières.

Aid workers who had been working with the 25,000 displaced people in Rann were among the dead.

“Six staff members or volunteers with the Nigerian Red Cross were killed and 13 were wounded,” said Jason Straziuso, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

According to Irabor, the bombardment happened during an operation to target Boko Haram militants in the area.

“Unfortunately, the strike was conducted but it turned out that other civilians were somewhere around the area and they were affected,” he told reporters in Maiduguri.

Nigerian president Mohammadu Buhari called the strike “a regrettable operational mistake” in a statement.

Much of the Nigerian military’s campaign against Boko Haram has been conducted using attack helicopters and fighter jets that fly over vast stretches of the northeast.

That has long posed a human rights dilemma, as militants are frequently difficult to isolate from the civilians held against their will in insurgent encampments. Some victims of Boko Haram have reported that the Nigerian military shot indiscriminately at those encampments during offensive operations, killing both militants and kidnapped civilians in the same stream of gunfire.

This is the first time during Nigeria’s three-year campaign against Boko Haram that the military has acknowledged a large number of civilians killed in a mistaken bombardment. It remains unclear how the military could have misidentified a camp where 25,000 displaced people were living with a terrorist enclave.

In recent months, the Nigerian military has fought with Boko Haram fighters in Rann, who had attacked troops with improvised explosive devices, suicide bombers and ambushes.

(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Kevin Sieff 

{Matzav.com}


6 COMMENTS

  1. Forget Israel. America itself murdered many Iraqis and Afghanistanians with “mistaken” bombing raids and the duffus John Kerry just laughed it off. Obama claims to have allegedly murdered Osama bin Laden without a trial, jury or court case. So we see, the United States policy of murdering others and what other Nations do is a double standard. Obama has no value of life other than his own and the black thugs of America.

    • I don’t think you can call the killing of Osama bin Laden a murder. He declared his holy war and got killed in that war. OBL may have had a trial if he surrendered, but be didn’t.

      BTW, you sound like you were defending bin Laden. Please remember that he is responsible for the death of many thousands in the United States and around the world.

      • Why was/is there no footage of any plane flying in to the Pentagon on Sep.11th??? Why are they covering up reports that the explosion came from inside the Pentagon not from the outside? How is it that only certain records went missing from the Pentagon but not others? Very strange circumstances.

  2. USAF, IAF, RAF, USMC, RuAF all make similar mistakes as the Nigerian air force.

    The noise is more in media when it involves civilian casualties, less media outcry when an air force mistakenly bombs its own friendly army on ground.

    So sad.

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