Autobayng News Team
Donald Trump has said the US carried out airstrikes against Islamic State militants in north-west Nigeria on Thursday, after spending weeks decrying the group for targeting Christians.
The president said in a post on his Truth Social platform: “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, 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. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.”
The US military’s Africa Command said the strike was carried out in Sokoto state in coordination with the Nigerian authorities. An earlier statement posted by the command on X said the strike had been conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities, but that statement was later removed. Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said he was “grateful for Nigerian government support + cooperation”.
Forests in Sokoto, which is bordered by Niger to the north, have been used as bases by gangs of armed bandits and members of the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) known locally as ‘Lakurawa’. Some analysts say the latter’s cell in the state began as a group of herders banding together to fight incursions from bandits, in the absence of state support.
Nigeria’s foreign ministry said the strikes were carried out as part of ongoing security cooperation with the US, involving intelligence sharing and strategic coordination to target militant groups. “This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West,” the ministry said in a post on X.
Earlier this month US planes conducted surveillance missions over the region. It’s believed they were using an airport in neighbouring Ghana as a launch base.
Trump has previously said he would launch a “guns-a-blazing” US military intervention in Nigeria, claiming that the country’s government has been inadequate in its efforts to prevent attacks on Christians by Islamist groups.
Nigeria is officially a secular country but its population is almost evenly divided between Muslims (53%) and Christians (45%). Violence against Christians has drawn significant international attention, especially among the religious right in America, and it has often been framed as religious persecution.
However, Nigeria’s government rejects framing the country’s violence in terms of religious persecution, saying in the past that armed groups target both Muslims and Christians, and US claims that Christians face persecution do not represent a complex security situation and ignore efforts to safeguard religious freedom. But the government has previously agreed to work with the US to bolster its forces against militant groups.
Many analysts Nigeria’s situation is complex and has long roots in the region’s history. In some parts of the country, clashes between itinerant Muslim herders and predominantly Christian farming communities are rooted in competition over land and water, but exacerbated by ethnicity and religion.
Priests and pastors have increasingly been kidnapped for ransom, but some experts say this may be a trend driven by criminal incentives rather than religious discrimination.
The strikes happened a day after a Christmas Eve bombing at a mosque in northeast Nigeria killed at least five people and left more than 30 others seriously wounded. The Nigerian army has attributed the suicide bombing in Borno, the centre of a jihadist insurgency for almost two decades, to Boko Haram.
Trump, who positioned himself as the “candidate of peace” in 2024, campaigned on the promise of extricating the US from decades of “endless wars”. However his first year back in the White House has been notable for the number of military interventions overseas, with strikes on Yemen, Iran, Syria and others, as well as a huge military buildup in the Caribbean targeting Venezuela.
