President Bola Ahmed Tinubu convened an emergency security meeting with service chiefs and the Inspector-General of Police at the Presidential Villa in Abuja after a Nigerian Air Force strike on April 11, 2026, killed more than 100 civilians at a market in northeastern Nigeria. The tragedy represents one of the deadliest military errors in the country’s 17-year fight against Islamic insurgents.
The northeastern region has suffered under jihadist insurgency since Boko Haram’s 2009 uprising, which produced powerful splinter groups, including Islamic State West Africa Province. Tens of thousands have died, and millions have been displaced in a conflict that continues to strain Nigerian security forces and international aid organizations.
Military aircraft conducting operations under Operation HADIN KAI struck Jilli market along the Borno-Yobe state border while hunting for Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province members. Children were among those killed. Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s Nigeria director, confirmed the youngest victims to the Associated Press: “We have their pictures and they include children.”
Local chief Lawan Zanna Nur Geidam told AFP that combined casualties, dead and wounded, reached approximately 200. Hospitals treating the injured struggled with the influx. At least eight additional victims died Sunday at medical facilities in Geidam and Maiduguri. A Geidam General Hospital worker, speaking anonymously, said at least 23 injured people were receiving treatment at that location alone.
Ahmed Ali, a 43-year-old market trader who sells medical consumables, described the attack from his hospital bed. “I became so scared and attempted to run away, but a friend dragged me and we all lay on the ground,” he told Reuters. Another survivor told the news agency that he had been shopping for animals when approximately 30 people around him fell after being struck.
The Nigerian military maintained that it conducted a carefully coordinated strike on a terrorist enclave and logistics hub near the abandoned village of Jilli, locally known as “Kasu Daulaye”—meaning “the terrorists’ market.” Military officials characterized the location as “long identified as a major terrorist movement corridor” used by Islamic State West Africa Province fighters and their collaborators. They claimed scores of terrorists were killed as they rode motorcycles in the restricted area.
Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum confirmed that both Jilli and the nearby Gazabure market had been officially closed five years ago due to insurgent control. Abdulmumin Bulama, a member of a civilian security group working with the military, said intelligence indicated terrorists had gathered near the market and were planning attacks on nearby communities. Security sources acknowledged that Boko Haram militants have long frequented the Jilli market seeking food supplies, complicating efforts to distinguish between civilians and insurgents.
The Yobe state government confirmed that the airstrike had targeted a Boko Haram stronghold and acknowledged that “some people…who went to the Jilli weekly market were affected.” Brigadier General Dahiru Abdulsalam, military adviser to the Yobe state government, provided no further details on the death toll. The Yobe State Emergency Management Agency dispatched response teams to assist with casualty evacuation and treatment.
The Nigerian Air Force acknowledged the incident and dispatched its Civilian Harm Accident and Investigation Cell to Jilli on a fact-finding mission. Officials confirmed they had executed what they termed a precision operation against a known terrorist location but initially said nothing about civilian deaths. The Air Force has promised a thorough investigation.
Amnesty International and local officials confirmed the catastrophic civilian toll. Sanusi told the Associated Press that the human rights organization condemned the strike as unlawful and called for an independent investigation, adding that the military is “fond of” labeling civilian casualties as bandits or terrorists. Medical facilities in the region—already stretched thin by years of insurgency-related casualties—struggled to cope with patients suffering from massive trauma, burns, and shrapnel wounds.
This deadly error continues a grim pattern in northeastern Nigeria, where the military frequently conducts air raids against armed groups controlling remote forest enclaves. According to an Associated Press tally, such strikes have killed at least 500 civilians since 2017—a toll that security analysts attribute to persistent failures in intelligence gathering and insufficient coordination between ground troops and air assets.
In January 2017, at least 112 people died when a fighter jet struck a camp housing 40,000 displaced people near the Cameroon border. In December 2023, a military airstrike mistook a Muslim religious gathering for bandits in Kaduna state, killing at least 85 people. On March 16, 2026, strikes on crowded areas in Borno State, including a market and the gate of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, killed at least 23 people and injured 108 others.
U.S. Africa Command spokeswoman Col. Rebecca Heyse said American forces played no role in the strike, noting that U.S. troops were “not involved in the planning, intelligence sharing or execution of this operation.”
Local officials continue to compile lists of the dead and missing. The death toll may rise as some of the seriously wounded remain in critical condition. Survivors grapple with injuries and the loss of family members in a region already devastated by years of conflict and instability.