Over 100 killed in Nigerian military air strike on village market

Maiduguri – More than 100 people have been killed and 35 others wounded after Nigerian military aircraft struck a busy village market in Jilli, Yobe state, in the country’s northeast, with a local chief putting the total number of dead and injured at around 200.

The strike happened on Saturday while the military was pursuing members of the rebel group Boko Haram in the area bordering Borno state, the heartland of a long-running rebellion that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions more across the region.

Local chief Lawan Zanna Nur Geidam told the AFP news agency that “the total casualties, dead and injured, is around 200.”

Amnesty International said in a post on social media on Sunday that more than 100 people had been killed in the attack. The human rights organisation condemned the strike, saying that “launching air raids is not a legitimate law enforcement method by anyone’s standard. Such reckless use of deadly force is unlawful, outrageous and lays bare the Nigerian military’s shocking disregard for the lives of those it supposedly exists to protect.”

Nigeria’s Air Force said in a statement that it had killed Boko Haram fighters in an air strike on the Jilli axis in Borno state but made no mention of hitting a market. The government of Yobe state later acknowledged in a separate statement that an air strike had been conducted near a market that people were attending at the time.

“Some people from Geidam LGA bordering Gubio LGA in Borno state, who went to the Jilli weekly market, were affected,” said Brigadier General Dahiru Abdulsalam, military adviser to the Yobe state government, without providing further details.

The Yobe State Emergency Management Agency said it had received preliminary reports of an incident at the Jilli market which reportedly resulted in casualties affecting marketers and had activated its emergency response.

Many of the injured were taken to hospitals in nearby Geidam and Maiduguri. A worker at the Geidam General Hospital told the Associated Press that at least 23 people injured in the incident were receiving treatment.

Amnesty International called on Nigerian authorities to “immediately and impartially investigate the incident and ensure that suspected perpetrators are held to account.”