At least 20 fishermen were killed in an airstrike by the Nigerian army targeting a jihadist camp in the northeast of the country, residents reported Monday (September 27th) to Agence France-Presse (AFP). and military sources.
A fighter plane bombed, Sunday morning, Kwatar Daban Masara, a village bordering Lake Chad, on the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, a stronghold of the Islamic State group in West Africa (Iswap) .
Kwatar Daban Masara, on the shore of the lake, is a “Door to the Iswap camps on several islands”says Labo Sani, a fisherman from the village, who says he witnessed the strike on Sunday at 6 a.m. local time.
The jihadist group recently lifted the ban on fishermen in this territory, allowing them to operate in the waters of the lake for a tax, bringing back a population that had left the region.
“An enemy territory”
“Any fisherman who goes to this area does so at his own risk, because it is enemy territory and there is no way to distinguish them from terrorists”, explains a member of the intelligence services. “According to our information, the death toll is much higher than 20 dead”, he adds, assuring that the airstrike was based on “Credible information” of a gathering of Iswap fighters in the village since Wednesday.
Aerial surveillance and field reports indicated that they were preparing for an attack, the source added. “An innocent civilian is not expected to be there and anyone who is there is certainly one of the terrorists”, she continues.
A Nigerian army airstrike on a village in neighboring Yobe state had already killed nine civilians on September 16. The Nigerian Air Force then explained that its fighter plane was chasing a group of jihadists in the area.
Nigeria has been fighting for twelve years a jihadist insurgency that has spread to neighboring Niger, Chad and Cameroon. It has left at least 40,000 dead and two million displaced.
In January 2017, at least 112 people were killed in an airstrike on a camp housing 40,000 people displaced by jihadist violence in Rann, a town near the border with Cameroon. The Nigerian army then questioned “The absence of appropriate marking of the area” in his report published six months later. In July 2019, at least 13 civilians were killed in an airstrike on the village of Gajiganna (north), which targeted fleeing jihadists.