News Desk
ISLAMABAD/ABUJA: Nigerian army massacred hundreds of children during its 13-year war against Boko Haram militants, a criminal investigation by Reuters revealed.
Investigation into massacre
Relatives, mostly mothers of the victims shared horrifying details of the massacre carried out by the Nigerian army and allied security forces during the 13-year war against Boko Haram militants in the country’s northeast.
Soldiers and armed personnel engaged by the government said that army commanders frequently ordered them to wipe out the children because they were the offspring of in Boko Haram militants or its Islamic State offshoot, who were inheriting the tainted blood of their insurgent fathers.
During these 13 years, deliberate killings of children occurred with a recurring frequency across the region, eyewitnesses told Reuters. More than 40 sources testified that they saw the Nigerian army targeting and killing children with impunity during military operations.
The eyewitnesses included parents and other civilians and soldiers, who said they participated in dozens of military operations, confirmed that the children were slaughtered. They estimated that thousands of children were killed during these operations.
A total of 60 children were killed in one operation in February 2021. In these operations, most of the children were shot, some in the back as they fled. Witnesses also said that Nigerian soldiers poisoned and suffocated the children in front of their mothers.
Yagana Bukar, a woman in her mid-20s, said that after she and other women and children escaped from Boko Haram fighters, two soldiers took her four-month-old twin boys from her and smothered them in front of her.
