Nigeria accidentally killed around 88 of its own citizens when military drones struck a Muslim religious festival.

The Nigerian army expressed its condolence and regret for the incident while noting the army had been targeting “armed bandits” in the area who had “terrorised the communities.”

“[T]he troops were carrying out aeriel patrols when they observed a group of people and wrongly analyzed and misinterpreted their pattern of activities to be similar to that of the bandits, before the drone strike,” the army tweeted.

An eyewitness to the event told BBC Hausa, “The aircraft dropped a bomb at the venue. It destroyed and killed our people including women and children.” The witness then said a second bomb dropped on those who tried to recover the bodies of the victims of the first blast, ABC News translated.