U.S. launches strikes on Islamists in Nigeria

U.S. forces struck numerous Islamic State targets in northwest Nigeria on Christmas Day in what President Trump said was retaliation for the terror group’s years of attacks on Christian civilians in the African nation.

U.S. Africa Command said the attacks were carried out in coordination with the Nigerian government, which has struggled to contain ISIS and its various affiliates that are gaining strength in Nigeria and the broader region. The Trump administration in recent weeks has ramped up its assault on the Islamic State around the world, including in Syria, where American forces hit more than 70 ISIS targets on Dec. 20 after a terrorist gunman killed two U.S. soldiers and a civilian interpreter earlier this month.

Analysts have warned that the group could be mounting a resurgence, both as an organized terrorist faction and as an inspiration to extremists around the world. The two men who allegedly carried out a deadly antisemitic attack at Australia’s Bondi Beach earlier this month, for example, were inspired by ISIS, Australian authorities said.

Mr. Trump offered little detail on the Nigerian operation in a Christmas evening Truth Social post.

“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!” he wrote.

Mr. Trump noted that he had given warning that the U.S. would not stand by and allow what some have characterized as a genocide or ethnic cleansing to happen.

---

SEE ALSO: People of faith face growing climate of violence, fear in Nigeria

---

“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.

Nigeria is the latest nation in which Mr. Trump has ordered new military operations or ramped up existing campaigns. The U.S. this year has carried more than 100 strikes against terror targets in Somalia, including some against ISIS, in addition to its recent military operations against the group in Syria.

Earlier this year, the administration conducted a prolonged campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. In June, Mr. Trump ordered U.S. airstrikes against key Iranian nuclear sites. And since September, the U.S. has been routinely targeting alleged drug boats off the coasts of Central and South America. Mr. Trump has said that he could soon order strikes against land targets in Venezuela. 

U.S. Africa Command said it struck ISIS targets in the Sokoto State region of Nigeria, near the nation’s northwestern border with Niger.

“U.S. Africa Command is working with Nigerian and regional partners to increase counterterrorism cooperation efforts related to ongoing violence and threats against innocent lives,” Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, the head of U.S. Africa Command, said in a statement. “Our goal is to protect Americans and to disrupt violent extremist organizations wherever they are.”

Mr. Trump said without elaborating on the targets that the strikes had succeeded. AFRICOM said that “multiple ISIS terrorists” were killed in strikes on several “ISIS camps,” but did not provide additional details.

Specialists said the Sokoto State area is strategically important from a counterterrorism perspective.

“This is an area where the Islamic State’s Sahel Province — predominantly based in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso — has made inroads into Nigeria itself,” Caleb Weiss, an analyst with the Bridgeway Foundation and an editor with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, said in comments circulated to reporters.

“In Sokoto, it has carried out attacks against both government forces and civilians, representing just one jihadist group operating in Nigeria,” he said.

The Trump administration earlier this year added Nigeria to a U.S. watchlist as a “country of particular concern,” citing statistics showing more Christians being killed there — 3,100 last year — than anywhere else in the world.

The 3,100 figure represents nearly 70% of Christians killed worldwide, according to the international watchdog group Open Doors.

Mr. Trump closed his post on Truth Social with a characteristically Trumpian touch.

“May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues,” Mr. Trump wrote.