Nigeria: Bombing of refugee camp claims more victims

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) has demanded independent and transparent investigations into the accidental bombing of a refugee camp in Nigeria, which had claimed far more victims than originally published. Most recently, Babagana Malarima, Head of the affected district, mentioned that 234 people had been buried at cemeteries in the city of Rann following the bombing of the refugee camp. “If this is true, the number of victims of the accidental attack is more than twice as high as initially estimated. This explains why Nigeria’s air force was reluctant to thoroughly investigate the background of the bombardment and to hold the responsible persons accountable,” said Ulrich Delius, the STP’s Africa expert, in Göttingen on Sunday. The human rights organization also demanded fast and unbureaucratic help as well as adequate compensations for the family members of the victims.

Babagana Malarima is head of the district Kala Balge, to which the city Rann belongs. On January 17, 2017, a combat aircraft of the Nigerian Air Force had accidentally dropped two bombs on a refugee camp located on the outskirts of the city. At first, it was assumed that about 50 to 70 people had lost their lives in the bombing.

The spokesman of the Ministry of Defense, Brigadier-General Rabe Abubakar, had commented on the new numbers of victims by stating that it was “not so important” whether a single person or a million people had lost their lives – but that what mattered is that all of the victims were Nigerians and that they must be commemorated. “Anyone who thinks it’s enough to commemorate the victims instead of taking adequate measures to protect the civilian population in the struggle against the terror organization Boko Haram has apparently not learned anything from the fatal failure of the Nigerian armed forces,” said Delius.

The number of civilian casualties caused by hundreds of air raids on inhabited villages and presumed positions of Boko Haram in Nigeria is an unknown parameter in the anti-terror measures in the West African country. For the most part, the authorities don’t allow humanitarian organizations, journalists, or human rights activists to access the embattled areas. Du to their arbitrariness, many of the civilian people fear the Nigerian security forces just as much as the Boko Haram fighters

Header Photo: European Union/ECHO/Isabel Coello via Flickr