No fewer than 11 soldiers and seven residents of Malele and Mutungi communities of Zamfara State were mistakenly killed by airstrikes aimed at neutralizing bandits.
Also, the airstrikes injured two soldiers and over 70 villagers.
Narrating how it happened, an eyewitness who identified himself as Nuhu Dansadau, said the bandits had on Saturday invaded Malele community of Dansadau Emirate in Maru Local Government Area, with the youths in the village putting up resistance.
Nuhu continued that the villagers were forced to send an SOS message to military operatives in Dansadau after the bandits went back to reinforce in large numbers.
The security operatives were said to have engaged the outlaws in a shootout.
According to the eyewitness, a large number of the bandits were killed or injured by the security operatives, leading the invaders to run to the nearby village of Mutungi and seek cover in a market.
Nuhu said, “When the tension became too much, the commanding officer of the army in Dansadau axis requested for the support of the Nigeria Air Force. It was the air strikes that affected many villagers.
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“For 11 soldiers and seven civilians to die and scores injured by airstrikes is very unfortunate, perplexing and embarrassing to the Nigerian military.”
He also added that about 67 villagers in the Mutungi community sustained various degrees of injuries with seven of the injured Dead-On-Arrival at the Ahmad Yarima Bakura Specialist Hospital in Gusau, the state capital.
He also noted that 26 villagers were also seriously injured in Mutungi community, with 20 others receiving treatment at Dansadau General hospital at the time of filing this report.
When newsmen visited the Ahmad Yarima Bakura Specialist Hospital in Gusau, some of the victims said it was a serious gun battle between the military and the bandits.
The victims claimed they were not injured by bandits or military operatives but rather sustained injuries during their struggle to escape.
Some of them spoke fearfully of a bandit kingpin popularly known as Damuna whom they claimed had kidnapped 225 persons in the nearby village of Randa, with 61 of the victims killed by guns while 50 others were slaughtered by knife and 10 subjected to serious tortures that killed them.
When contacted, the 207 Quick Response Command of the Nigeria Air Force was reluctant to answer questions.