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       LAGOS, Nigeria — A drone strike by Nigeria’s military killed scores of civilians celebrating a religious festival, the deadliest single incident on a growing list of such mistakes.

       Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency put the death toll at 85 civilians in the village in Tudun Biri in Kaduna state on Sunday, following what President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described as a “bombing mishap.”

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       “President Bola Tinubu sympathizes with the families of victims, the people and government of Kaduna State over the bombing mishap,” said the statement, which said he “describes the incident as very unfortunate, disturbing, and painful, expressing indignation and grief over the tragic loss of Nigerian lives.” The president called for a “full-fledged” investigation.

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       More than 300 people were killed in 14 separate reported strikes carried out by the Nigerian air force between January 2o17 and January 2023, according to a count by SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based intelligence company. The drone strike on Sunday was carried out by an aviation wing of the army, rather than the air force, said Confidence MacHarry, lead security analyst at SBM.

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       The incident has raised concerns across the country about what many see as a worrying history of military and intelligence failures by armed forces that have received sustained security support from the United States as they combat a variety of security crises, including Islamic extremists and a growing network of armed groups known as “bandits.”

       Earlier this year, the Biden administration approved a $1 billion arms sale to Nigeria that was criticized by some lawmakers because of humans rights concerns linked to the military — including an illegal mass abortion operation revealed by Reuters targeting women and girls impregnated by extremist fighters from the Boko Haram group.

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       “The military is impervious to reforms and internal review process for reviewing such mistakes,” MacHarry said. “There is no investigation, no internal review mechanism, and certainly no compensation for families of the victims. That is what makes it bad.”

       Nigeria’s air force admits to strike in area where civilians were reported killed

       The villagers had gathered in the night when an aircraft from the Nigerian army began to hover above. According to Amnesty International and a survivor who spoke to local media, the aircraft dropped two bombs at 9:30 p.m. (The Washington Post could not verify that two bombs were dropped; and the military did not confirm that there were two bombs.)

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       “The first one has killed many people and within a few minutes we came back to direct people looking for the victims and then the airplane came back and threw the bomb again,” Idris Tahiru, a survivor, told Channels TV.

       Bandit groups that the military has been targeting operate in Kaduna state, but it is not clear why the military targeted this village specifically.

       The Nigerian army’s top brass apologized personally to the affected community on Tuesday and were present at the burial of civilians, with Nigeria’s chief of army staff, Lt. Gen. Taoreed Lagbaja, calling the incident “grave, regrettable.” Speaking to reporters in Tudun Biri, Lagbaja promised to “fine-tune” operations going forward to avoid such mistakes.

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       Matthew Page, an associate fellow with the Africa program at the think tank Chatham House, said that “civilian casualties are inevitable when countries use airstrikes as an internal policing tool.”

       “With international help, the Nigerian military has turned to air power — both manned and unmanned — as the solution for a problem caused by poor governance, corruption and marginalization,” Page said. “This incident — the latest in a series and by no means the last — shows that bad policy and poor leadership has a real human cost.”

       correction

       A previous version of this article misstated the name of the lead security analyst at SBM Intelligence. He is Confidence MacHarry. The article has been corrected.

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