A Nigerian jet has accidentally bombed a refugee camp killing more than 100 people after mistaking them for Boko Haram extremists.
Among the dead were 20 Red Cross workers, according to their colleague, who were with the refugees when the bombardment rained down on northeast Rann, near the border with Cameroon.
The camp in northeast Nigeria was for those made homeless by Boko Haram Islamists.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Tuesday condemned an accidental air strike by the Nigerian military on the camp, and their director of operations Jean-Clement Cabrol said: ‘This large-scale attack on vulnerable people who have already fled from extreme violence is shocking and unacceptable.’
Among the wounded were two soldiers and Nigerians working for (MSF) and the International Committee of the Red Cross, he said.
Thirteen Red Cross workers were also wounded in the blast.
This is believed to be the first time Nigeria’s military has admitted to making such a mistake.
A senior military source in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri, said the casualties were ‘huge’, adding: ‘A fighter jet hit the wrong target.’
MSF said its teams 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.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which also had teams in the area, said only there were ‘a number of people wounded and some killed’, without specifying figures.
‘We are currently in contact with the relevant authorities to organise medical assistance and evacuations,’ an ICRC spokeswoman in Abuja said.
Major General Lucky Irabor, who heads the military operation against the militants, said the air force had been given coordinates of ‘Boko Haram terrorists’ in the Kala-Balge area.
‘Unfortunately the strike was conducted but it turned out that the locals somewhere in Rann were affected,’ he told reporters at a briefing in the Borno state capital, Maiduguri.
Irabor did not give casualty figures but said local staff from MSF and the ICRC were among those wounded.
‘These are the result of fog of war,’ he added. ‘It is unfortunate. That is the reason why this war must come to an end.’
The bombing comes as Nigeria’s military claims further gains against the Islamic State group affiliate, pushing them out of captured territory and their remote bases in Borno state.
Last month, the army said the conflict was in its final stages after nearly eight years of violence that has killed at least 20,000 and left more than 2.6 million others homeless.
There have been ‘friendly fire’ incidents in the conflict.
In March 2014 a military jet killed five civilians and wounded several others when it mistakenly bombarded Kayamla village in Konduga district of Borno.
The jet mistook the village for a Boko Haram camp during a night raid.
In January that year, the convoy of a Nigerian senator was fired on by an air force jet which mistook the six-vehicle convoy under police and military escort for Boko Haram fighters.
No one was hurt and the military described the incident as an ‘operational blunder’.
Villagers in the past have reported some civilian casualties in near-daily bombardments in northeastern Nigeria.
Irabor said he ordered the mission based on information that Boko Haram insurgents were gathering, along with geographic coordinates.
It was too early to say if a tactical error was made, he said.
The general, who is the theater commander for counterinsurgency operations in northeast Nigeria, said the Air Force would not deliberately target civilians but there will be an investigation.
Some of the nearly 300 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014 and freed last year have said three of their classmates were killed by Air Force bombardments, according to the freed girls’ parents.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who has pledged to end the militant group’s seven-year insurgency, described the incident in the Kala Balge district of Borno state as a “regrettable operational mistake” and appealed for calm, his office said in an e-mailed statement.
Boko Haram wants to impose its version of Islamic law on Africa’s most populous country of more than 180 million people. Nigeria is almost evenly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south.