Seven children were killed and another five injured by “mistake” on Friday during a Nigerian army airstrike targeting armed groups in the Nachade village in southern Niger, near the border with Nigeria.
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The Maradi region governor Chaibou Aboubacar explained that parents were attending a ceremony, and the children were probably playing when the strikes hit them. “Four children died instantly, and three others died to their injuries while being transported to the hospital,” he lamented.
On Saturday, Aboubacar went to the Nachade village, where he visited the places of the bombing, the graves of the minors murdered and offered his condolences to the authorities and the villagers.
Jihadi groups from the Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara Nigerian towns usually extort the population of the Maradi region, where they carry out targeted assassinations, kidnappings for ransom, attacks by traders, and cattle raids.
In Feb. 2015, 36 people were killed and another 27 injured in a bombing of an “unidentified” plane against a mosque in the Abadam village in the Diffa region in Nigeria, where the jihadists of the Boko Haram group had just signed their first attacks against Niger.
In 2018, Niger reinforced military patrols along its border with Nigeria to prevent the incursions of these groups. Nevertheless, in April 2021, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said it feared a third outbreak that could arise in the Maradi region, which is home to 100,000 Nigerian refugees who have fled relentless attacks in their country.
Currently, Niger faces two fronts of jihadist attacks. In the western part of the country, groups affiliated with Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaeda operate, and the ISIS in West Africa (ISAWP) and the Nigerian Boko Haram groups are active near the border with Nigeria.