Military says jet accidentally bombed refugee camp in Borno, killing – according to MSF – at least 50 and wounding 120.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Nigeria’s military says a fighter jet has mistakenly bombed a refugee camp in the country’s northeast, killing – according to aid workers – dozens of people and wounding scores more.
The incident occurred on Tuesday at about 9am local time (08:00 GMT) in Rann, in the far north of Borno state, the epicentre of Boko Haram’s armed campaign, as humanitarian workers distributed food to civilians.
Nigeria’s air force said a fighter jet was on a mission against Boko Haram fighters when it accidentally struck the camp and killed an unknown number of refugees and aid workers.
The strike on the camp killed both refugees and aid staff working in it [MSF/Handout via Reuters] |
France-based MSF said its workers were trying to provide emergency first aid at its facility in the camp and were stabilising patients to evacuate the wounded from the scene.”Our medical and surgical teams in Cameroon and Chad are ready to treat wounded patients. We are in close contact with our teams, who are in shock following the event,” it added.Manji Cheto, a security analyst, told Al Jazeera that despite recent improvements in the fight against Boko Haram, the latest incident “reaffirms the fact that Nigeria still has so much way to go in terms of boosting the intelligence capacity of its security forces in dealing with this.”The timing is rather unfortunate as well because this is coming on the back of the government actually facing a lot of criticism for doing too little for the internally displaced camps.”The war between Boko Haram and the Nigerian government has killed more than 20,000 people in the past six years. Some two million have also been forced to flee their homes, many of whom have moved to camps because it has been too dangerous to return home.The air strike came amid an offensive against the armed group by Nigeria’s military over the last few weeks.President Muhammadu Buhari said last month a key camp in the group’s Sambisa forest base in Borno state had fallen.