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Nigeria buries army chief after air crash
CGTN
Nigeria's top-ranking army commander General Ibrahim Attahiru was killed on on May 21, 2021 when his plane crashed in the country's north, an air force spokesman said. /AFP

Nigeria's top-ranking army commander General Ibrahim Attahiru was killed on on May 21, 2021 when his plane crashed in the country's north, an air force spokesman said. /AFP

Nigeria's top-ranking army commander Lieutenant General Ibrahim Attahiru was laid to rest in the capital Abuja on Saturday, a day after he and 10 other officers died when their plane crashed in bad weather.

It was the third military air disaster this year and the army posted videos on social networks of the service attended by political and military leaders at the national mosque.

Army chief of staff Attahiru was only appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari last January in a shakeup of the senior command to better fight surging violence and a more than decade-long jihadist insurgency.

But the president, who offered his condolences just hours after the crash in the northern state of Kaduna, did not attend the funeral, an absence widely criticised on social media.

Attahiru died as news emerged that Nigeria's Boko Haram jihadist leader Abubakar Shekau had himself been seriously wounded or possibly killed after clashes with a rival Islamic State-allied faction.

The aircraft went down trying to land at the Kaduna International Airport "due to bad weather", the armed forces said.

Source(s): AFP

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