Nigeria Air Strike Targeting Terrorists Kills Children in Niger Republic, Official Says

“There was a mistake with the Nigerian strikes on the border that resulted in victims on our territory in the village of Nachade,” said the official.

“The victims are 12 children, seven of them dead and five wounded.”

According to the governor, “the parents were attending a ceremony and the children were probably playing when the strikes” hit them.

Four children died instantly and three others succumbed “to their injuries while being transported to hospital”, he said.

He did not say how he knew that Nigerian forces carried out the attack. Niger’s state television also said it was carried out by Nigerian forces, without providing evidence.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF), which cared for some of the wounded, confirmed the strike. It said that 12 people died, including four children. Local inhabitants told MSF that Nigerian forces were pursuing targets who had fled a border town.

Investigation was under way

“As a matter of policy, the Nigerian Air Force does not make any incursions into areas outside Nigeria’s territorial boundaries. That’s our policy,” Major General Jimmy Akpor, Nigeria’s director of defence information, said. He said an investigation was under way.

The specific reason for the strike was not clear but banditry is known to be widespread in the region.