A fresh Reuters report has accused the Nigerian Army of carrying out a massacre of thousands of children during the ongoing war against terrorism.
The organisation said the report, released on Monday, was based on the revelations of more than 40 soldiers and civilians who claimed to have witnessed the Nigerian military kill children or seen children’s corpses after a military operation.
Reuters said it investigated six of the incidents in which at least 60 died.
In the report, one of the victims claimed that her children were killed because they belonged to terrorists.
The report read, “The massacre, previously unreported, is just one instance in which the Nigerian Army and allied security forces have slaughtered children during their gruelling 13-year war against Islamist extremists in the country’s northeast, a Reuters investigation found.
“Soldiers and armed guards employed by the government told Reuters that Army commanders repeatedly ordered them to ‘delete’ children because the children were assumed to be collaborating with militants in Boko Haram or its Islamic State offshoot or to have inherited the tainted blood of insurgent fathers.
“More than 40 sources said they saw the Nigerian military target and kill children or saw the dead bodies of children after a military operation. These sources included both parents and other civilian witnesses, as well as soldiers who said they participated in dozens of military operations in which children were slaughtered.
“Together, their estimates added up to thousands of children killed.”
This is coming after same report accused Nigerian Army of running a secret abortion programme on female victims of terrorists, adding that no fewer than 10, 000 pregnancies had been terminated since at least 2013.
The FG has since denied this as the Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed said the report is false and calculated to demoralise operatives fighting the war.
