Survivors ask why busy market bombed in Nigerian anti-terror campaign

Survivors and observers have questioned the Nigerian military’s rationale for a devastating airstrike on a busy market that killed as many as 200 people, many of them civilians.

The hit on Jilli market on the border of the north-eastern Borno and Yobe states on Saturday is the latest in a string of attacks by the country’s air force over the past decade with a high civilian death toll.

The military said it had been targeting members of the Islamic State West Africa Province (Iswap) jihadist group. A local councillor said more than 200 people had died, while Amnesty International said the death toll was above 100 and rising.

Nigeria has struggled to suppress multiple conflicts, including an insurgency in the north-east by the Islamist group Boko Haram, which it has been battling for 17 years. The group split in 2016, with Iswap forming in its place. Meanwhile, the country’s north-west region is beset by armed groups of bandits, and there are regular fatal clashes between herders and farmers in the country’s middle belt.

Nigeria’s military said in a post on X on Sunday that it had “successfully conducted a precision airstrike on a known terrorist enclave and logistics hub located near the abandoned village of Jilli … [that] followed sustained intelligence”.

The statement, attributed to the military spokesperson Sani Uba, said: “Post-strike assessment confirmed that the target area was struck with high accuracy, resulting in the destruction of the identified terrorist logistics enclave. Scores of terrorists were neutralised in the strike.”

However, local traders denied that Islamist fighters had been among them. “I don’t know if there were jihadists at the market. We are just ordinary people,” Mala Garba, 42, told Agence France-Presse while recovering from injuries at a hospital in Maiduguri, Borno’s state capital.

Patients receive treatment at a hospital in Damaturu. Photograph: Micheal Abu/AP

He was among 46 victims of the airstrike at the hospital. Some were heavily bandaged, while others had IV drips attached.

Lawan Zanna Nur Geidam, the area’s local councillor and traditional leader, said: “It’s a very devastating incident at Jilli market. As I’m speaking to you, over 200 people have lost their lives from the airstrike at the market.”

Yobe state officials later admitted that civilians had been affected. “Some people … who went to the Jilli weekly market were affected,” Brig Gen Dahiru Abdulsalam, a military adviser to the Yobe state government, told Reuters.

It was likely there had been Iswap members or supporters at the market, said Malik Samuel, a researcher with Good Governance Africa. “That area is particularly known for the presence of Iswap,” he said. “It’s a major logistics route for the group.”

However, he said it would have been “impossible” for an airstrike to distinguish between fighters and civilians at a busy market frequented by hundreds or even thousands of people, adding: “Would it not be better to trace people leaving the market and going to known areas occupied by this group … instead of just hitting a market that you know clearly that there would be civilians in this place?”

Nigeria’s military has killed at least 500 civilians in airstrikes since 2017, according to the Associated Press. At least 115 people were killed in 2017 when a camp housing displaced people in Borno was bombed. More than 120 people were killed in two airstrikes on a religious gathering in Kaduna state in December 2023.

“The lack of accountability is a big problem, because it emboldens the military to continue doing that,” Samuel said.

Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International Nigeria’s executive director, said: “You cannot trust the military to investigate themselves. Whenever they investigate themselves, the outcome is as usual: they exonerate themselves.”

He added: “These deadly airstrikes will undermine trust in public institutions and will even undermine the fight against insurgency and banditry.”

The US has previously accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from jihadists, although Muslim civilians are also killed by Islamist groups. On Christmas Day 2025, the US carried out airstrikes on an Islamist group known as Lakurawa in north-west Nigeria.