A Nigerian military airstrike on a crowded weekly market in the village of Jilli, on the border of the northeastern states of Borno and Yobe, has killed at least 100 people and possibly more than 200, with survivors and human rights organisations questioning how an operation targeting jihadists could strike so many civilians. The airstrike took place on Saturday, 11 April, and the Nigerian Air Force said it had been aimed at members of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), an extremist group that split from the long-running Boko Haram insurgency in 2016. The military described the strike as a precision operation against a "known terrorist enclave and logistics hub," saying that scores of militants had been neutralised.
Survivors and local officials told a sharply different story. A local councillor and traditional leader for the area said more than 200 people had lost their lives, while Amnesty International put the confirmed death toll above 100 and rising. Among the injured was Mala Garba, a 42-year-old trader recovering at a hospital in Maiduguri, Borno's state capital, who said he had no knowledge of any jihadist presence at the market. Forty-six victims were being treated at the same facility. Yobe state officials later acknowledged that civilians attending the regular weekly market had been among those affected.
Security analysts offer a more complex picture. Malik Samuel, a researcher with Good Governance Africa, acknowledged that ISWAP has a significant presence in the area and that Jilli market was a known logistics route for the group. However, he argued that conducting an airstrike on a market frequented by hundreds or thousands of people made it impossible to distinguish fighters from civilians, and suggested that tracking individuals leaving the market toward known militant areas would have been a more proportionate approach. President Bola Tinubu's communications adviser, Sunday Dare, pushed back against criticism, calling the political reaction an attempt to exploit the strikes, and asserting that the market had for years served as a logistical hub for Boko Haram and ISWAP factions.
The strike is far from an isolated incident. Nigeria's military has killed at least 500 civilians in airstrikes since 2017, according to data compiled by the Associated Press. Previous tragedies include the bombing of a displaced persons camp in Borno in 2017, which killed at least 115 people, and two strikes on a religious gathering in Kaduna state in December 2023, which killed more than 120. In response to the Jilli strike, the Air Force announced an internal investigation, though there is no indication that Nigeria's Human Rights Commission will be included in the process — a concern given that Amnesty International has noted the military's consistent record of self-exoneration in past inquiries.
The broader significance of the strike extends beyond the immediate death toll. Nigeria is battling overlapping crises: the northeastern ISWAP and Boko Haram insurgency, armed bandit groups in the northwest, and recurring violence between herders and farmers in the central "middle belt" region. Rights advocates warn that incidents like the Jilli strike erode public trust in state institutions and may ultimately weaken the very counterinsurgency effort the military is trying to advance. "These deadly airstrikes will undermine trust in public institutions and will even undermine the fight against insurgency and banditry," said Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International Nigeria's executive director.