Just In : Report on Tudun Biri military drone massacre ready – Defence Chief

The victims of the strike were mostly children and women celebrating the Maulud (birthday of Prophet Muhammad), last December.

Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Christopher Musa, says the report of the official investigation into the military drone airstrike on civilians in Tudun Biri, a community in Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State, is ready.

The strike killed many people, mostly children and women, celebrating the Maulud (birthday of Prophet Muhammad), last December.

Mr Musa, an army general, told BBC Hausa on Tuesday that the report has identified the number of casualties but not their identities, as the community buried the bodies before the arrival of the authorities.

“We have only identified the numbers of casualties, not their identities because they (community members) had buried the victims before the arrival of the authorities and we can’t go and exhume the bodies.

“The report is ready it will be made public before the end of February,” Mr Musa said.

He said the military is a trained institution of men and women with an instrument of coercion meant to protect the territorial integrity of Nigeria and its citizens, not to harm them.

“Nigerian Army is meant to protect the country and its people not to harm law-abiding citizens. We are only after the criminals”, Mr Musa added

Several attacks unreported by the military
The Tudun Biri attack is one instance in a series of similar airstrikes on civilians by the Nigerian military in recent years. It was the second military airstrike on the civilian populace in the north of the country last year.

The earlier attack in Nasarawa State was believed to have been carried out by a drone. The police confirmed that at least 27 herders, mainly ethnic Fulani, were killed in the Nasarawa incident.

However, Fulani groups claimed 40 people were killed and scores of others injured. Most of those killed were herders returning from Benue State, after reclaiming their livestock seized by the Benue State Government.

Another military airstrike claimed scores of civilian lives in December 2022 while soldiers were repelling attacks by non-state actors on some communities in the Dansadau District of Maru Local Government Area of Zamfara State.

In the Zamfara attack, women and children were also killed.

In July 2022, at least six people were reported killed by an Air Force jet in Kunkunna in Safana Local Government of Katsina State. Like in Zamfara, the victims were hit by bombs targeted at bandits.

In April 2022, six children were killed when a Nigerian Air Force jet bombed their residence in Kurebe, Shiroro Local Government Area of Niger State. Ironically, the parents of two of the six children who were killed in the airstrike had been killed by bandits in 2020.

In January 2017, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, said at least 52 people were killed after a Nigerian fighter jet ‘accidentally’ dropped a bomb on an internally displaced persons, (IDP) camp in Rann, headquarters of Kala-Balge Local Government Area in Borno State.

If the military authorities should eventually release the report of the investigation into the Tudun Biri disaster, it would be the first time they would be doing so.

1. The Defence spokesperson, Bolaji Kazzem, and his colleague in the army, Onyema Nwachukwu, could not be immediately reached to comment on whether the reports on previous incidents will also be published.