President Trump said late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces had killed a top leader of the Islamic State who was hiding in Africa, where the United States has been targeting Islamic militants whom the president says are killing Christians.
In a social media post, Mr. Trump said he had directed U.S. forces in an operation on Friday night with the Nigerian military to eliminate the leader, Abu-Bilal al-Minuki.
Mr. al-Minuki was designated a terrorist and one of the leaders of the Islamic State by the State Department in 2023. He was a Nigerian citizen, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which had sanctioned him.
Mr. Trump said Mr. al-Minuki had been hiding in Africa but did not specify where he was killed or provide details about the mission, which he said was “very complex.”
“He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans,” Mr. Trump said in the post.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria said in a statement on social media that the mission had struck Mr. al-Minuki’s compound near Lake Chad, which is at the intersection of four countries, and killed several of his lieutenants. He did not specify the location of the compound.
Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Mr. al-Minuki had been responsible for recent attacks against the military in the country’s northeast.
A spokeswoman for the United States Africa Command said it did not have anything to add to Mr. Trump’s statement.
The U.S. military has launched a number of attacks against Islamic jihadists in Nigeria since December, when a U.S. missile strike killed terrorists in two ISIS camps in the country’s northwest. That operation was done in coordination with the Nigerian military, the United States Africa Command said at the time.
Thousands of Christians and Muslims have been killed in Nigeria in land disputes, sectarian violence and terrorism, which Christian activists and Republican lawmakers in the United States have viewed as the persecution of Christians. There is no clear evidence to show that Christians are attacked more frequently than any other religious group in Nigeria, analysts say.
Earlier this year, a U.S. official said that the Pentagon would send about 200 troops to Nigeria to help train its military to fight Islamic militants but that U.S. forces would not be involved in combat operations.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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