Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal, on Wednesday said the recent military airstrike in the North-Western state was not intentional.

Lawal stated this during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today, where he commiserated with the families of the incident.

“It was not intentional. It was in the process of fighting these bandits (that) they were struck,” he said.

“The Chief of Air Staff has set up a committee to commiserate with the state government as well as the people that were affected. They also went there yesterday to do on the spot assessment to see who was involved and what happened to guide against future occurrence.”

He said he was aware of the military operation before the tragedy occurred, saying that he personally invited the Air Force to neutralise some bandits who were attacking the area.

During the programme, he expressed hope that the military has all the capacity to tackle bandits activities within one month.

The governor said the days of notorious bandits leader, Bello Turji, are numbered, saying he would soon be eliminated just as other top bandits have been neutralised.

On January 11, over 16 residents were killed after a military air strike tore through the Tungar Kara community in the Maradun Local Government Area of Zamfara State.

Worried by the situation, the Nigerian Air Force deployed a fact-finding team deployed to investigate the recent military air strikes tragedy in the state.

The team met with Governor Lawal on Tuesday at the Government House in Gusau.

Security operatives have been battling bandits have been terrorising north-west and central states. The bandits raid villages, burn homes and kill and abduct residents for ransom.

Several accidental air strikes have occurred in recent months including a Christmas Day attack that killed at least 10 civilians in neighbouring Sokoto state.

In 2023, at least 85 civilians, mostly women and children, attending a Muslim religious gathering at a village in Kaduna state were killed after they were mistaken for bandits.

In January 2017, at least 112 people were killed when a jet struck a camp housing 40,000 people who had been displaced by jihadist violence in a town near the Cameroonian border.