In this photo taken on September 15,
2016 women and children queue to
enter one of the Unicef nutrition clinics at the Muna makeshift camp which houses more than 16,000 IDPs (internally displaced people) on the outskirts of Maiduguri, Borno State, northeastern Nigeria.<br />AFP PHOTO / STEFAN HEUNIS
The death toll from a botched air strike on Boko Haram fighters in northeast Nigeria rose to 70 on Wednesday, as aid agencies indicated more could die without urgent treatment. Nigeria called Tuesday’s incident at a camp for displaced people in Rann a mistake and blamed the “fog of war”,
sparking strong condemnation from
aid agencies working in the crisis-hit region.
The International Committee of the
Red Cross (ICRC), which lost six
members of its Nigerian affiliate, said: “It is estimated that 70 people have been killed and more than 100
wounded.”
ICRC surgeon Laurent Singa, part of a team dispatched to Rann shortly after the bombing, described the conditions for post-operative care as “not adequate”.
“All the patients must be evacuated to (the Borno state capital) Maiduguri as soon as possible,” he added in a statement.
Nine patients were said to be in a
critical condition and were evacuated to Maiduguri on Tuesday. Forty-six of the 90 that remain were said to be “severely injured”.
They needed to be transferred “as a
matter of urgency”, the ICRC said,
adding: “Patients are attended to in an open-air space in a precarious
environment.”
Public hospitals and doctors in the city have been put on standby to receive the wounded but there were already reports that some casualty
departments were overwhelmed.
– ‘Catastrophic event’ –
Aid agencies assisting the hundreds of thousands of people in northeast
Nigeria in dire need of food, shelter,
clean water and healthcare expressed shock and dismay at the bombing.
The UN High Commissioner for
Refugees, Filippo Grandi, called it “a
truly catastrophic event”, calling for a full investigation to take place to
prevent any repeat.
Jean-Clement Cabrol, the director of
operations for the medical charity
MSF, which earlier gave a death toll of 52 and 120 injured, called the attack “shocking and unacceptable”.
The secretary-general of the
Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan
Egeland, said: “Displacement camps
are supposed to be safe havens for
people fleeing war and conflict.
“It cannot become the new normal that ‘accidental’ attacks on camps
sheltering the innocent are allowed to happen again and again in conflict zones.”
Human Rights Watch’s senior Nigeria researcher Mausi Segun said the government in Abuja should provide “prompt, adequate and effective compensation” to victims and their families.
“Even if there is no evidence of a
wilful attack on the camp, which
would be a war crime, the camp was
bombed indiscriminately, violating
international humanitarian law,” she
added.
“Victims should not be denied redress merely because the government decided the bombing was accidental.”
Accidental bombings have occurred
before in the conflict and senior
military commanders called the latest “a mistake” yet maintained
humanitarian workers were not
targeted directly.
Major General Lucky Irabor, who
heads the counter-insurgency
operation, said the air force jet had
been told to target insurgents in the
flashpoint Kala-Balge area but hit
Rann instead.
The aid workers were distributing food at the military-run camp housing tens of thousands of people.
– Questions asked –
Local and international aid agencies
have until recently been unable to get to Rann because of bad roads and insecurity in the remote region near the border with Cameroon around Lake Chad.
The military announced last month it has ousted Boko Haram from its camps in Sambisa Forest, in southern Borno, sending fighters north.
Nigeria’s military has announced an
investigation into what happened. The Daily Trust newspaper reported that clearly marked ICRC tents were
bombed, without quoting sources.
It said none of its staff was injured or killed but disclosed that three
employees of a Cameroonian firm it
hired to provide water and sanitation
services lost their lives.
One aid worker told AFP colleagues
were “stunned” at what happened and suggested civilians were likely to have been caught up in previous bombing raids in the remote region.
“I’m sure it (the bombing in Rann) is
an accident but why would they (the
Nigerian military) bomb a place that
they’re guarding?” the aid worker said on condition of anonymity.
Ties have been strained between
humanitarian agencies and the
Nigerian authorities, who have
accused some aid organisations of
exaggerating the food crisis triggered by the insurgency.
In December, Save the Children said
4.7 million people in the northeast
needed food assistance and some
400,000 children were at imminent
risk of starvation.
The presidency called some of the
claims “hyperbolic” while the Borno
state governor recently accused some aid agencies of profiting from the crisis.
