Nigeria airstrike kills scores at crowded market, officials dispute target

Scores were feared dead after Nigerian airstrikes hit a crowded market in Jilli village on the Borno-Yobe border, with witnesses and rights groups saying the blast tore through civilians as military officials insisted they had targeted militants.

Early accounts from residents and a local councillor put the death toll at least 200 feared dead, while other reports said more than 100 civilians, including children, were killed and many more were injured. The attack struck Jilli’s weekly market in northeastern Nigeria, a region that has spent more than 15 years under the shadow of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP.

The Nigerian Air Force said the operation was part of Operation Hadin Kai and described the site as a terrorist enclave and logistics hub. Military officials said the strike was intelligence-driven and claimed it hit fighters riding motorcycles in restricted areas. Yobe State officials also defended the operation, saying the area had been used as a Boko Haram stronghold.

Amnesty International and witnesses offered a sharply different account. Witnesses said three military jets bombed the crowded market, raising fresh questions about how the target was identified and whether civilians had been properly protected. The clash between the official account and the testimony from the ground has deepened a longstanding credibility gap around Nigeria’s counterinsurgency air campaign.

The strike landed in an area where civilians have long lived alongside the violence of insurgency, displacement and repeated military operations. Jilli lies along a border corridor that has become a flashpoint in the fight against Boko Haram and ISWAP, and the latest deaths have again focused attention on intelligence failures, rules of engagement and the burden borne by communities caught between militants and the state.

The episode also intensified criticism from opposition figures and renewed demands for accountability in the northeast, where civilian-harm allegations have repeatedly fueled fear and distrust. With the toll still disputed, the one point no side can escape is the scale of the human loss in a market that should have been full of trade, not bodies.