Nigerian Jet Mistakenly Bombs Refugee Camp, Killing Scores

>“This large-scale attack on vulnerable people who have already fled from extreme violence is shocking and unacceptable,” said Dr. Jean-Clément Cabrol, the director of operations for Doctors Without Borders. “The safety of civilians must be respected. We are urgently calling on all parties to ensure the facilitation of medical evacuations by air or road for survivors who are in need of emergency care.”

>Military officials said local workers for Doctors Without Borders had also been wounded, but the group could not confirm that.

>On Tuesday afternoon, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria acknowledged the military error on his official Twitter account.

>Mr. Buhari has said repeatedly that Boko Haram has been defeated, even as the group has carried out marketplace bombings in Nigeria, Cameroon and elsewhere in recent weeks. This week, two suicide bombers — one of them a girl about 12 years old — detonated explosives at the University of Maiduguri, where students and teachers had gathered for morning prayer. The blast killed four people, including Aliyu Usman Mani, 60, a veterinary medicine professor and father of two, and forced the university to postpone exams. The bombing also came as the United States is considering selling the Nigerian government warplanes, despite objections from some officials in Congress over the military’s past record of human rights abuses.

>The violence has uprooted more than two million people from their homes in the region. Some of them wind up in camps like the one at Rann, where 20,000 people in the past six months have fled to escape Boko Haram’s marauders.
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>The small, densely packed camp includes people living in an old schoolhouse, mud-brick homes and other structures, some of which were smashed in the bombing, said Hugues Robert, the Nigeria program manager for Doctors Without Borders.

>The bombing struck the camp early Tuesday afternoon, said Mr. Robert, who has been in touch with his team in Rann. The camp has been largely inaccessible for months, he said, and the charity’s workers had reached Rann for the first time only in December. Workers had returned on Saturday to establish a malnutrition screening clinic.

>On Tuesday, that clinic was converted into a triage center as the wounded victims of the bombing, some with grievous injuries, jammed under the tents, lying in the soil to await treatment from the small number of medical professionals there, who were equipped to treat hunger, not blast wounds.

>Darkness had fallen by the time more help arrived, and it seemed impossible to evacuate anyone before Wednesday, Mr. Robert said. “It’s really chaotic,” he said. “A lot of people won’t survive the night.”

>Rann is known as a hotbed of Boko Haram activity. The military had cleared the area of militants just this spring, stranding 3,000 people without food or water, according to local news reports. But with the end of a rainy season that had limited mobility, Boko Haram has regained a foothold. Late last month, a military post near Rann was attacked in a battle that lasted three hours, an indication of the strength and firepower of militants in the area.
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>Before the bombing on Tuesday, the Nigerian military had been informed that fighters were amassing to attack a military post nearby, according to a Western diplomat who requested anonymity in talking about security issues. Armed with geographic coordinates of where they thought the fighters were assembled, the air force launched the bombing strike but hit the camp in error.

>At a news conference in Maiduguri on Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Lucky Irabor acknowledged the mistake, calling it “disturbing.”

>In a statement issued by his spokesman, Mr. Buhari pleaded for calm, calling the bombing “a regrettable operational mistake.”

Stupid Nigers.

>"regrettable operational mistake"
Basic militarized response.

>>101042
nothing of value was lost.

they probably would be in calais by now anyway

>>101042
Really sad. Any life lost break my heart, especially of innocent civilians.

My prayers go out to them.

>>101052
*Nigerians
Learn how to use a demonym you nigger

>>101052
FPBP

>>101328
Are you Nigerian? Why would someone care about dead negroes?

>>101042
Meh, a few less obnoxious and felonious negros to take welfare checks in first world nations.