Nigerian Military Accused of War Crimes After Deadly Market Airstrikes

Nigeria has recently seen an increase of military strikes targeting jihadists and bandits. But Amnesty International said on Tuesday that the strikes were also killing dozens of innocent civilians.

The rights group accused the Nigerian military of killing over 100 people on Sunday in airstrikes on a crowded market in a village in the country’s northwest.

The strikes at Tumfa market in Zamfara state, according to Amnesty International, wounded dozens of villagers and appeared to be the latest in a series of military attacks carried out on markets and villages in northern and central Nigeria, amid clashes between the military and terrorist groups in recent months.

A military spokesman confirmed the strikes on what he described as a terrorist hide-out in Tumfa, adding that there was no evidence of civilian casualties but that the allegations were being investigated.

“Several terrorists were neutralized, while surviving elements fled the area,” said the spokesman, Maj. Gen. Michael Onoja.

But Isa Sanusi, Amnesty’s Nigeria director, who pieced together a different account from speaking to survivors and relatives of victims, said that even if bandits or terrorists attended the 100-year-old market, bombing it “amounts to a war crime.”

“The majority of the victims are girls and women who were at the market,” he said. “They are not bandits or terrorists.”

While the military did not provide a death toll, a local government official, Zubairu Ahmed, said more than 100 people, both civilians and bandits, were killed in the attack.

An official of the Nigerian Red Cross who visited the hospital treating people injured in the market strike said that women and children were among the casualties. But the official, Nura Bello, did not yet have a confirmed death toll.

Amnesty’s Nigeria office said in a statement that military aircraft had bombed the market when it was “full of people and without warning.” It added, “The scene was chaotic. There were screams, blood and bodies all over the ground.”

Last month, dozens of people were killed in airstrikes on Jilli, a village in the northeast. A military spokesman said the target was a terrorist logistics hub in an abandoned village, but residents described it as a thriving market patronized by many civilians.

Over the weekend, the Nigerian military acknowledged carrying out airstrikes on villages in Shiroro, an area in the central state of Niger. The military said it had killed about 70 people, who it said were bandits. But Amnesty said at least six civilians were among the dead, and posted pictures of injured children on X, the social media platform.