Nigeria rights body demands probe into civilian deaths in airstrikes
Nigeria's human rights body on Thursday called on the military to launch a "thorough and prompt" investigation into what it called recurrent civilian casualties from military airstrikes.
The National Human Rights Commission, a state body tasked with investigating alleged rights violations, said repeated reports of deaths and injuries raised serious concerns about compliance with humanitarian and human rights law, News.az reports, citing Reuters.
Amnesty International, citing witnesses, said on Tuesday that at least 100 civilians had been killed in a Nigerian military airstrike on a crowded market in remote northwest Zamfara state last weekend, the third reported incident since April.
The military has said there was no evidence of civilian casualties.
Nigeria has increasingly relied on air power in conflict-affected regions including the northeast, where it is battling a long-running insurgency, and the northwest, where armed kidnapping gangs known locally as bandits and Islamist militants operate.
The NHRC said that while the fight against insurgency, banditry and other insecurity was a legitimate responsibility of the state, operations must not violate the constitution or international humanitarian principles.
By Faig Mahmudov
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