United States President Donald Trump has said US forces carried out strikes against Islamic State terrorists in northwestern Nigeria on Thursday.
He said this followed killing of Christians in Nigeria.
Specifically, the Department of Defense said scores of ISIS terrorists were neutralised in an attack conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities.
The strikes hit ISIS targets on Christmas Day, according to Trump.
According to Trump “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,” he said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
“May God Bless our Military,” he said, and wished the military merry Christmas, including the dead Terrorists”, saying there will be many more if the slaughter of Christians continues.
The US Africa Command said in an X post that it conducted a strike “at the request of Nigerian authorities in (Sokoto state) killing multiple ISIS terrorists.”
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth also took to X to praise his department’s readiness to take action in Nigeria, and said he was “grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation.”
Meanwhile, the attacks marked the first by US forces in Nigeria under Trump.
In addition, Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar told the BBC it was a “joint operation” targeting “terrorists”, and it “has nothing to do with a particular religion”.
Without naming IS specifically, Tuggar said the operation had been planned “for quite some time” and had used intelligence information provided by the Nigerian side.
The minister did not rule out further strikes, adding that this depended on “decisions to be taken by the leadership of the two countries”.
