The Reuters agency published on Monday December 12 a new part of its investigation detailing the extreme violence that the Nigerian army has shown vis-à-vis civilians, collateral victims of its fight against the terrorist group Boko Haram, in the north. -eastern Nigeria.
With our correspondent in Lagos, Liza Fabbian
After revealing last week the existence of a program aimed at ending the pregnancies of former jihadist captivesthe agency of Reuters press recounts at length how the military regularly massacred children and adolescents suspected of complicity with the enemy or born of the rapes committed by Boko Haram men.
This time, no meticulously organized operation, but ” a traveling massacre “who would have done” thousands of very young victims in villages in northeast Nigeria, according to Reuters.
A total of 15 security force personnel – whether soldiers, members of self-defence militias or armed guards – testified to ” targeted killings of children in which they sometimes participated directly. It was both ” to eliminate extremists, but also to put an end to the lives of children born of rape committed by insurgents, according to Reuters.
These massacres of civilians took place in isolated communities in northeastern Nigeria, in which young boys were suspected of being informants or of having been indoctrinated by the jihadists.
Many children murdered for hours after the passage of jihadists
The news agency details a series of bloody events, including ” a massacre near a waterhole “, which occurred in July 2020, near the village of Kukawa, and during which at least ten young people were allegedly shot dead by men in army uniform. According to several witnesses, the little victims were then buried in a mass grave, alongside other civilians – men and women – who were shot alongside them.
In 2018, “ over 40 children were allegedly assassinated during a military operation which lasted from morning until midnight in the town of Gasarwa. The jihadists had crossed it before.
In addition, former Boko Haram captives released by the army claimed that their children were then killed by lethal injections in the Giwa Barracks military detention center in Maiduguri.
Once again, army officials are in complete denial. They assure that ” the protection of non-combatants is one of [leurs] priorities ” at point ” deny certain keystrokes to avoid any collateral damage.
► To read also: Women and children, the first victims of the atrocities of Boko Haram