Air Strikes Kill 200 Bandits on Mortocyles in Niger

Kingsley Nwezeh in Abuja

Military air strikes targeting locations around Ghana village in Niger State killed 200 armed bandits.
The air interdiction comes barely a week after the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Oladayo Amao, reassured Nigerians that terrorists and insurgents would have no hiding place.
THISDAY gathered that the military’s Air Component of Operation Thunder Strike and Operation Gama Aiki on Wednesday, between 4.45pm and 6.34pm, carried out air strikes on bandits’ locations around Ghana Village in Mariga Local Government Area (LGA) of Niger State.
Sources said the terrorists were under surveillance for some time and were observed to be in three different groups of approximately 65 terrorists with at least 25 motorcycles per group.
However, rather than strike individual groups separately which may not achieve the desired outcome, the surveillance team patiently waited until the three groups amassed at a crossroad location near Ghana Village. It was at this point that the air strikes were authorised.
An unnamed source privy to the operation revealed that the precision strikes had a 100 percent accuracy, going by the intensity and spread of the fireball which entirely engulfed the terrorists.
“At least nothing less than 80 terrorists and the equipment would have perished in that strike”, the source said.
A minimal number of survivors were seen crawling or barely limping off from the location, which the ground troops immediately mopped up.
Locals residing near Ghana village also confirmed the strikes.
A local cobbler, Mallam Biko Usman, near Ghana village, confirmed seeing a huge fireball after the strike.
He also said there was pandemonium and confusion as ground troops quickly surrounded remnants of the terrorists.
Meanwhile, the Niger State government, through the Commissioner for Local Government, Chieftaincy Affairs and Internal Affairs, Mr Emmanuel Umar, at a briefing in Minna on Wednesday, confirmed that over 200 terrorists were killed by military air strikes and other joint operations in some villages in Mariga LGAs and other parts of the state between 28 February and 2 March 2022.
When contacted, The NAF Spokesperson, Air Commodore Edward Gabkwet, confirmed that strikes were indeed authorised and carried out alongside sister services and security agencies on terrorists’ locations somewhere in Mariga LGA of Niger State after days of intensive surveillance so as to avoid unintended casualties.
On the number of terrorists killed, Gabkwet stated that “it would take a while to confirm such and stated that what matters is not necessarily the number of terrorists killed but the fact that locals can move around freely, and children can also be able to go back to their schools without threats to their lives”.