NIGERIAN AIRFORCE JET BOMBS REFUGEE CAMP IN BORNO STATE

The admission by Nigeria that its air force accidentally targeted a camp for people who have been internally displaced represents a significant change in attitude by the forces fighting the terrorist insurgency known as Boko Haram.
In what the Nigerian officials have described as a "regrettable operational mistake," fighter jets on Tuesday bombed the camp as part of an operation against Boko Haram in Rann in the northeastern Borno state.

Mistakenly believing that a gathering of Boko Haram terrorists was in Borno, Nigerian Maj. Gen. Lucky Irabor says his forces "got the coordinates and I directed that the air (force) should go and address the problem."

As it is now known, the jets hit innocent civilians who had been fleeing Boko Haram attacks, killing at least 70 -- including some members of Red Cross staff -- and injuring many more.

The airstrike has once again raised questions about Nigeria's ability to defeat the terrorists. The conflict to date has claimed thousands of lives and displaced more than 2 million people in the northeast of the country, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
This admission of error from Nigerian officials feels a world away from four years ago when the very same military was being accused of abusing the people it was meant to protect -- and was being accused of corruptly looting billions of dollars meant to aid the fight against terrorism.
For three years, the United States refused to sell arms to Nigeria over these abuse and corruption allegations. The lack of faith in Nigeria's ability to fight Boko Haram is likely to continue into the next US administration: Trump's transition team recently asked the State Department why the United States was bothering to fight Boko Haram, and why the Chibok girls had not yet been found, according to a report in The New York Times.
The skepticism is in some respects understandable. As Boko Haram wreaked carnage in northeast Nigeria, there was a palpable sense of defeatism among the local population. As village after village was attacked, the armed forces that were supposed to defend civilians instead reportedly dropped their weapons and fled.
Announcements have been made about the death or capture of Boko Haram leaders, only for those same leaders to pop up in angry videos, trashing the government claims.

Much of the criticism and pessimism is fair -- there certainly have been a number of catastrophic military decisions if Nigeria's seven-year fight with Boko Haram is taken as a whole. But President Muhammadu Buhari was elected in May 2015 on the promise of taking the fight to Boko Haram. As odd it may seem, the tragic error in Rann suggests that this may be happening.
Since Buhari's election, Nigerian forces have been able to clear Boko Haram out of areas such as Rann.
This action has allowed aid groups such as the Red Cross -- which tragically lost some of its staff in this attack -- to access these places for the first time.
They were once off-limits to all but military personnel -- and these deaths are a grim reminder that the fight is far from over: As these areas open up to aid organizations, the sheer scale and scope of the humanitarian disaster is becoming apparent for the first time.
But the notion that the Nigerian military does not know what it is doing does not stand up to impartial scrutiny, and those quick to blame it ignore the massive changes that this fight has recently seen.
As the scale of the tragedy in Rann became clear, Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of the Red Cross, told CNN from Geneva, Switzerland: "These armies, wherever they may be, will track their enemy and occasionally they will make mistakes and strike the wrong people."


Boko Haram is no different from Al-Shabaab, ISIS, the Malian jihadists who set off a car bomb Wednesday last month in northern Mali -- they are certainly no more beatable.
Buhari has moved his military command from Abuja to the epicenter of the Boko Haram world in Maiduguri, capital of Borno. The move has isolated Boko Haram from the population it had frightened for so long, pushing the militants deeper into impenetrable forests and away from the northeast.
In June, his air force bought three Alpha Jets and three M1F7 fighter jets to flash out Boko Haram from the Sambisa Forest, on the edge of the Cameroon, Chad and Niger borders. These countries have now also been dragged into the fight against the terror group.
It will get messy, this war, but the fight back has well and truly begun.

 A Borno state government official, who was helping to coordinate the evacuation of wounded from the remote area by helicopters, said more than 100 refugees and aid workers were among the dead. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to reporters.

Doctors Without Borders said its team based in Rann counted at least 52 bodies and was treating 200 wounded, many in critical condition, and the death toll was expected to rise.

"This large-scale attack on vulnerable people who have already fled from extreme violence is shocking and unacceptable,'' said Dr Jean-Clement Cabrol, the aid group's director of operations.
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As night fell, the group's team struggled to stabilise the seriously wounded. "We hope that during the night not many more people will die,'' said the group's head of emergency programs, Hugues Robert, describing a complex evacuation because the area is insecure.

Photographs of the carnage showed a man carrying a wounded child, his clothing stained with blood, as well as bloodied victims being treated on the ground outside a tent clinic overflowing with the wounded. Nearby, corpses lay covered by blankets and prayer mats, alongside mounds of hastily dug graves.

After the attack, the charred remains of makeshift corrugated iron lean-tos and mud homes filled the landscape.

The International Committee for the Red Cross said six workers with the Nigerian Red Cross were among the dead and 13 were wounded. "They were part of a team that had brought in desperately needed food for over 25,000 displaced persons,'' spokesman Jason Straziuso said in a statement from Nairobi, Kenya.

Two soldiers were also wounded, as well as Nigerians working for Doctors Without Borders, Irabor said, without giving a precise figure.

The general, who is the theatre commander for counterinsurgency operations in northeast Nigeria, said he ordered the mission based on information that Boko Haram insurgents were gathering in the area, along with geographic coordinates.

It was too early to say if a tactical error was made, he said, adding that the bombing would be investigated.

Doctors Without Borders spokesman Etienne l'Hermitte in Geneva urged authorities to facilitate cross-border land and air evacuations.

"Our medical and surgical teams in Cameroon and Chad are ready to treat wounded patients. We are in close contact with our teams, who are in shock following the event,'' he said in a statement.

Villagers have previously reported civilian casualties in airstrikes on Boko Haram positions in northeastern Nigeria.

Some of the schoolgirls kidnapped by the insurgents in 2014 and freed last year have said three of their classmates were killed by air force bombardments, according to the freed girls' parents. Of the nearly 300 schoolgirls who were abducted, 196 remain missing.

The bombings have helped drive Boko Haram out of many towns and villages and, according to Buhari, the insurgents' last stronghold in the Sambisa Forest last month.

Boko Haram's 7-year-old Islamic uprising has killed more than 20,000 people and forced 2.6 million from their homes, creating the continent's worst humanitarian crisis, with the United Nations warning some 5.1 million people face starvation.