President Bola Tinubu has ordered an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the military dropping bombs in the Kaduna community of Tudun Biri.
The Nigeria Army has claimed responsibility for the attack which according to the Kaduna State Emergency Management Agency, 85 people have died and search is ongoing for those who are missing. The Army said on Monday, that its officers were chasing after bandits from Zamfara State and it inadvertently dropped the bombs with a drone attack on the community Sunday night.
Tinubu, who is attending the Cop28 Climate Summit in Dubai, said the “the bombing mishap” in a village at Tudun Biri, was “very unfortunate, disturbing, and painful,” his spokesman Ajuri Ngelale said in a statement.
“The President directs a thorough and full-fledged investigation into the incident and calls for calm while the authorities look diligently into the mishap,” said Ngelale.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International’s Nigeria office said 120 people were killed in the attack, citing reports of its workers and volunteers in the area.
“Many of them were children [and] more dead bodies are being discovered,” Isa Sanusi, the group’s director in Nigeria, told The Associated Press.
At least 85 bodies were recovered, according to Igabi resident Mustapha Rufai. “They said they mistakenly threw a bomb on them,” he said.
The attack was the latest in recent errant bombings of residents in Nigeria’s troubled regions; between February 2014 when a Nigerian military aircraft dropped a bomb on Daglun in Borno state killing 20 civilians and September 2022, there were at least 14 documented incidences of such bombings in residential areas.
