LAGOS, May 14 (Reuters) – Nigeria’s human rights body on Thursday called on the military to launch a “thorough and prompt” investigation into what it called recurrent civilian casualties from military airstrikes.
The National Human Rights Commission, a state body tasked with investigating alleged rights violations, said repeated reports of deaths and injuries raised serious concerns about compliance with humanitarian and human rights law.
Amnesty International, citing witnesses, said on Tuesday that at least 100 civilians had been killed in a Nigerian military airstrike on a crowded market in remote northwest Zamfara state last weekend, the third reported incident since April.
The military has said there was no evidence of civilian casualties.
Nigeria has increasingly relied on air power in conflict-affected regions including the northeast, where it is battling a long-running insurgency, and the northwest, where armed kidnapping gangs known locally as bandits and Islamist militants operate.
The NHRC said that while the fight against insurgency, banditry and other insecurity was a legitimate responsibility of the state, operations must not violate the constitution or international humanitarian principles.
“Nigerians deserve to know why this has become a recurring decimal. For how long will this continue?” NHRC executive secretary Tony Ojukwu said.
In a separate statement dated May 13, U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Turk said he was shocked by reports of civilian deaths in Zamfara and urged Nigerian authorities to undertake a “thorough, independent and impartial” investigation.
In April, about 200 civilians were killed in an airstrike on a weekly market in Jilli, in northeastern Nigeria. The military has opened an investigation into that incident.
Under Nigerian law, the commission can investigate alleged abuses and refer matters to the country’s attorney general for prosecution.
(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe, Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
