Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday called for an investigation into a drone strike by his country’s military that killed scores of civilians on Sunday.

The attack occurred on Sunday evening in a village in northern Kaduna state, where armed groups were widespread. According to local authorities, many of the victims were gathered for a Muslim celebration.

At least 85 people were declared dead as of Tuesday, including children, women and the elderly, Nigeria’s main emergency agency, the National Emergency Management Agency, said. said in a statement.

At least 66 others were injured and the search for more bodies was continuing, it said. Although there have been other bombings in the past decade, Amnesty International said this was by far the deadliest, with the death toll hovering around 120.

Mr Tinubu called for “a thorough and comprehensive investigation” into a “bombing accident” and described the events as “very unfortunate, disturbing and painful”, a statement from the Nigerian presidency said.

On Tuesday, the Chief of Staff of the Nigerian Army, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, visited Tudun Biri, the strike-hit village, and acknowledged the army’s responsibility. He said air patrols “observed a group of people and wrongly analyzed and misinterpreted their activity patterns to resemble those of the bandits.”

Since being sworn in as president in May, Mr Tinubu has made tackling insecurity a high priority. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with 220 million people, has been tormented in the east by Islamist groups and in its northern and western states by scores of armed gangs carrying out widespread killings and kidnappings.

According to this, at least 700 civilians were killed between July and September SBM intelligencea Nigerian risk consulting company. Kidnappings from priestteachers, students and commuter have plagued the country for years.

Nigeria’s security forces are struggling to contain the violence. Its military is the largest in West Africa and has been a major recipient of American security assistance, but it has also been accused of widespread human rights abuses, including: Forced abortions And indiscriminate killings.

“Despite reports of civilian casualties from airstrikes by the Nigerian armed forces and other concerns, the flow of U.S. weapons into Nigeria has not slowed,” wrote researchers at Brown University and the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based nonprofit group a report published last year.

Isa Sanusi, Amnesty International’s country director in Nigeria, said Sunday’s attack killed at least 120 civilians, according to his organization.

“The Nigerian military is used to not being held accountable and getting away with these atrocities,” Mr. Sanusi said in a telephone interview. “It makes them less hardworking and more reckless.”

Before Sunday’s attack, at least 90 civilians had been killed in airstrikes by the Nigerian Air Force over the past five years, according to a Reuters analysis to match from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a US-based crisis monitoring organization.

The number of civilian deaths in the three northeastern states where most extremist violence has occurred was not included.

Ismail Alfa Contribution to reporting from Maiduguri, Nigeria.