Nigerian Army denies killing 20 fishermen
The Nigerian army responded to the recent airstrike that targeted a jihadist camp on Nigeria’s Lake Chad on Sunday stating that the attack was “precise and professionally executed.
At least 20 fishermen were accidentally killed in airstrikes targeting Daban Masara, an area known to be a stronghold of the Islamic State group in West Africa (ISWAP), according to AFP.
According to the Nigerian Air Force, “no civilian communities were in the line of fire” and men “wearing combat jackets and uniforms resembling those of Iswap fighters were seen”, without “any fishing activity being detected”.
In mid-September, an airstrike by the Nigerian army on a village in neighboring Yobe State also killed nine civilians. The air force later said that its fighter plane was pursuing a group of jihadists in the area.
Nigeria has been fighting a 12-year jihadist insurgency that has spread to neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon and left at least 40,000 dead and two million displaced.
In January 2017, at least 112 people were killed in an airstrike on a camp housing 40,000 people displaced by the jihadist violence in Rann, a town near the border with Cameroon.
The Nigerian army then blamed the “lack of proper marking of the area” in its report published six months later.
By AFRICANEWS
