Death toll in botched Nigeria air strike soars to 70

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’ –
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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 –
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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.