US president says ‘deadly strike’ in Nigeria targeted ISIL fighters who had killed ‘primarily, innocent Christians’.
The United States has carried out an air strike against ISIL (ISIS) fighters in northwest Nigeria, US President Donald Trump said.
“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday evening.
Trump said ISIL fighters had “targeted and viciously” killed “primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”
“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” Trump said.
The US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), which is responsible for operations in Africa, said in a post on X that the air strike was carried out “at the request of Nigerian authorities” and had killed “multiple ISIS terrorists”.
“Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media, warning also of “more to come”, without providing details.
In a statement, AFRICOM said the strike occurred in “Soboto state,” an apparent reference to Nigeria’s Sokoto State.
The US military action comes weeks after Trump said he had ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria following claims of Christian persecution in the country.
Nigeria’s government had dismissed Trump’s assertions, saying armed groups target both Muslim and Christian communities in the country, and US claims that Christians face persecution do not represent a complex security situation and ignore efforts by Nigerian authorities to safeguard religious freedom.
Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement shortly after Trump announced the US strike, confirming early on Friday that Nigerian authorities were “engaged in structured security cooperation with international partners, including the United States of America, in addressing the persistent threat of terrorism and violent extremism”.
“This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West,” the ministry said.
Major General Samaila Uba, the Nigerian military’s director of defence information, said Nigeria’s armed forces, “in conjunction with” the US, had carried out the strike based on “credible intelligence and careful operational planning”.
The “precision strike operations against identified foreign ISIS-linked elements operating in parts of North West Nigeria” had received approval from federal government authorities, Uba said in a statement on Friday.
“The operation underscores the resolve of the Federal Government of Nigeria, working with strategic partners, to confront transnational terrorism and prevent foreign fighters from establishing or expanding footholds within Nigeria’s borders,” he said.
The threat of US military action in Nigeria had been “percolating for some time”, and Donald Trump had accused Nigeria of not doing enough to protect its Christian community in his first term as president.
“But in the last two months or so, with congressional pressure and the State Department, they declared Nigeria a particular country of concern when it came to the rights of Christians, and we had heard that the US had begun overflight surveillance of Nigeria from an airbase in Accra, in Ghana, over the last several weeks. And now we have this,” Rattansi said.
“On Christmas Day, the Trump administration acts. This will go down very well with Trump’s Christian evangelical base, I am sure,” he said.
Trump issued his attack statement on Christmas Day while he was at his Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago Club, where he has been spending the holiday.
US launches strikes against Islamic State in Nigeria
The US has launched strikes against militants linked to the Islamic State group (IS) in north-western Nigeria, where jihadists have long carried out an insurgency.
Camps run by the group in Sokoto state, which lies on Nigeria’s border with Niger, were hit, the US military said, adding that an “initial assessment” suggested “multiple” fatalities.
US President Donald Trump said the Christmas Day strikes were “powerful and deadly” and labelled the group “terrorist scum”, saying it had been “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians”.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar told the BBC it was a “joint operation” and had “nothing to do with a particular religion”.
Tuggar said the strikes had been planned “for quite some time” and had used intelligence information provided by Nigeria. He also did not rule out further strikes.
Referencing the timing of the strikes, he said they did not have “anything to do with Christmas, it could be any other day – it is to do with attacking terrorists who have been killing Nigerians”.
The Nigerian government has been fighting a complex network of jihadist groups, which includes Boko Haram and IS-linked splinter groups, for several years.
The Trump administration has previously accused the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians from jihadist attacks and has claimed a “genocide” is being perpetrated.
Trump has previously labelled Nigeria a “country of particular concern”, a designation used by the US state department that provides for sanctions against countries “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom”.
The US military was ordered to prepare to intervene in Nigeria in November.
Are Christians being persecuted in Nigeria as Trump claims?
At the time, an adviser to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu told BBC News that militants had targeted people “across faiths”, and said any US military action should be carried out jointly.
Groups monitoring violence say there is no evidence to suggest that Christians are being killed more than Muslims in Nigeria, which is divided roughly evenly between followers of the two religions.
In a social media post late on Christmas Day confirming the strikes, Trump said that he would “not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper”.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that he was “grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation”.
“Merry Christmas!” he added, writing on X.
The US Department of Defense later posted a short video that appeared to show a missile being launched from a ship.
On Friday morning, the Nigerian foreign ministry said in a statement that the country’s authorities “remain engaged in structured security co-operation with international partners, including the United States of America, in addressing the persistent threat of terrorist and violent extremism”.
“This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West,” the statement said.
Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and IS-linked offshoots have wrought havoc in north-eastern Nigeria for more than a decade, killing thousands of people.
Most victims have been Muslims, according to Acled, a group that analyses political violence around the world.
Nigerian human rights lawyer and conflict analyst Bulama Bukati speculated that Thursday’s strikes had targeted a relatively new IS-aligned splinter group, which originated in the Sahel region and has recently moved its fighters to Nigeria.
The largest IS-linked group in Nigeria – Islamic State West Africa Province – operates in the north-east of the country, he told BBC World Service, while the smaller group – known locally as Lakurawa – has sought to establish a base in north-western Sokoto state.
He continued: “They started slipping into Nigeria in 2018 but over the past 18 months or two years they established camps in Sokoto state and Kebbi state.
“They have been launching attacks and imposing their social laws over people in Sokoto state over the past 18 months or so.”
According to BBC Monitoring, a pro-IS social media channel has been reporting on almost daily US reconnaissance flights in Sokoto, as well as in the north-western state of Borno, where the Nigeria’s largest IS-linked group has its stronghold.
In central Nigeria, there are also frequent clashes between mostly Muslim herders and farming groups, who are often Christian, over access to water and pasture.
Deadly cycles of tit-for-tat attacks have also seen thousands killed – but atrocities have been committed on both sides.
The Nigeria strikes are the second major US intervention targeting IS in recent weeks.
Last week, the US said it had carried out a “massive strike” against IS in Syria.
US Central Command (Centcom) said fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery “struck more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria”. Aircraft from Jordan were also involved.
Those strikes were launched in retaliation for the killing of three Americans – two soldiers and a civilian interpreter – in an ambush launched by the group.
COURTESY BBC
