Two ISIS-linked camps were taken out in US-backed airstrikes on Christmas, the Nigerian government confirmed Saturday.
“These locations were being used as assembly and staging grounds by foreign ISIS elements infiltrating Nigeria from the Sahel region … to plan and execute large-scale terrorist attacks within Nigerian territory,” Muhammed Idris, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and National Orientation, said in a statement.
Sixteen precision munitions were launched from a platform in the Gulf of Guinea against two major ISIS enclaves in the Bauni Forest of the Sokoto State on the country’s northern border, “successfully neutralizing the targeted ISIS elements,” Idris said.
The US military’s Africa Command made an initial assessment that “multiple ISIS terrorists were killed,” but an exact number has not been released.
No civilian casualties were reported, although debris from the strikes fell in two nearby towns, the Nigerian government confirmed.
The Sahel corridor — a transnational belt stretching across several African countries — has long been exploited by jihadist groups to move fighters and weapons.
Nigeria has fought Islamist insurgencies for more than a decade, but the arrival of ISIS-linked foreign fighters within the last 8 years marked a significant escalation.
The Pentagon coordinated with the Nigerian government ahead of Thursday’s strikes — launched just after midnight local time on Christmas Day — through intelligence gathering and planning.
“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!” President Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.
“Merry Christmas to all, including the dead Terrorists.”
The Department of War shared unclassified footage of a missile being launched from the deck of a military vessel after Trump announced the operation, as village residents nearby described glowing bright red skies and intense heat from the attacks.
Last month, Trump warned that he would cut off US aid to Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country and biggest oil producer — and go into the country “guns-a-blazing” if its government didn’t do more to stop the Islamic extremists from killing Christians.
The country’s population is almost evenly split between Muslims, who live primarily in the north, and Christians concentrated in the south.
More than 7,000 Christians have been massacred in Nigeria this year alone, according to the human rights group Intersociety.
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