Jos (Nigeria) (AFP) – The Nigerian military and the “bandit” gangs it is fighting killed around 100 civilians Sunday in one of the bloodiest single days of the country’s conflict against armed groups, sources across the country have told AFP.

The Nigerian military killed at least 72 people, many of them civilians, in an airstrike on a crowded market in the northwestern state of Zamfara, a community leader told AFP, with some bodies “blown beyond recognition”.

Amnesty International’s Nigeria chapter said “at least 100 civilians” were killed in the attack on the market, reportedly controlled by criminal gangs, while a resident of a nearby village put the toll at 117.

The strike came the same day that another attack by the Nigerian air force targeting bandits killed 13 civilians, in central Niger state, the victims’ families told AFP.

News of attacks from both the Nigerian military and the various armed groups it is fighting often takes days to emerge from far-flung, rural areas.

But as the smoke cleared Monday, it appeared that Sunday was particularly deadly, with bandits also killing dozens of civilians in their own attacks.

The Nigerian military denied its strikes killed civilians in both instances.

Bandit gangs, motivated by money rather than the political or religious ideals of Nigeria’s jihadist groups, raid villages, conduct kidnappings for ransom, and force farmers and miners to pay “taxes” in rural areas with minimal state presence.

They are decentralised armed groups that have at times battled Nigeria’s more centrally organised jihadist factions – and also worked with them against common targets.

Known locally as “bandits”, they emerged in the country’s northwest, growing out of conflicts between farmers and herders that spiralled into organised armed groups seeking quick money in the impoverished countryside, sometimes numbering hundreds of men.

Armed gangs killed 30 travellers in an attack Sunday in Zamfara state, in a massacre unrelated to the air strike, according to a security report prepared for the UN and seen by AFP.

The same day, bandits launched “coordinated attacks” in Katsina state that killed 12, according to another UN security report.

…