85 civilians killed in a drone strike by the Nigerian army

A Nigerian army drone accidentally killed at least 85 civilians on Sunday in a village in the Kaduna State, northwest Nigeria, according to official sources, marking one of the deadliest military bombings in the country.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu also ordered an investigation on Tuesday after the army admitted that one of its drones targeting armed groups accidentally struck the village of Tudun Biri, where residents were celebrating a Muslim festival.
The army did not provide figures on the casualties, but locals said that 85 people, including many women and children, were killed.
“The northwest zonal office received information from local authorities that 85 bodies have been buried so far, while searches continue,” said the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in a statement.
NEMA stated that 66 other people were being treated at the hospital, but emergency officials were still negotiating with community leaders to ease tensions and gain access to the village.
Nigerian armed forces often resort to airstrikes in their fight against bandit militias in the northwest and northeast of the country, where jihadists have been fighting for over a decade.
This conflict has resulted in over 40,000 deaths and two million displaced since 2009.
“President Tinubu describes the incident as very unfortunate, disturbing, and painful, expressing his outrage and grief at the tragic loss of Nigerian lives,” the presidency said in a statement.
The army stated that its drone was on a routine mission that “inadvertently hit members of the community.”
Most of the victims were women, children, and elderly individuals celebrating the Muslim festival of Mawlid, commemorating the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.
“I was inside the house when the first bomb was dropped… We rushed to the scene to help the affected people, then a second bomb was dropped,” said Idris Dahiru, a resident of the area, to AFP.
“My aunt, my brother’s wife and his six children, my four brothers’ wives are among the dead. My elder brother’s family perished, except for his toddler who survived,” he added.
Militias have long terrorized some regions in northwest Nigeria, operating from camps deep in the forests and launching raids on villages to loot and kidnap residents for ransom.
In the northeast, jihadists have been pushed back from territories they occupied during the height of the conflict, although they continue to fight in rural areas.
Nigerian army bombings have previously accidentally hit civilians. In September 2021, at least 20 fishermen were killed and several injured in an attack on Kwatar Daban Masara on Lake Chad in the northeast, as the army mistakenly identified them as fighters.
In January 2017, at least 112 people were killed when a fighter jet struck a camp housing 40,000 people displaced by jihadist violence in the town of Rann, near the border with Cameroon. The Nigerian army blamed the “lack of proper marking of the area” in a report released six months later.