Lagos (AFP) – Nigeria on Friday signalled that more strikes against jihadist groups were expected after a Christmas Day attack by US forces that President Donald Trump said “decimated” Islamic State-linked camps they targeted in the northwest of the country. Nigeria insisted it was a joint operation, saying that it provided intelligence for Thursday’s attack. The US military said the strikes killed multiple IS fighters. A Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the strikes “were approved by the government of Nigeria,” without saying whether Nigeria’s military had been involved. Trump said in an interview published Friday that the strikes had been scheduled earlier than Thursday, “And I said, ‘nope, let’s give a Christmas present.’ They didn’t think that was coming, but we hit them hard. Every camp got decimated,” he told Politico.
Nigeria, located in west Africa, faces interlinked security crises, with jihadists waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed gangs raiding villages and staging kidnappings in the northwest. The strikes came after Abuja and Washington have been locked in a diplomatic dispute over what Trump has characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria’s myriad armed conflicts. Questions remain over which armed group was targeted, and details over the strikes have varied between Nigerian and US accounts. Washington’s framing of the violence as amounting to Christian “persecution” is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.
US defence officials posted a video of what appeared to be a nighttime missile launch from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag. “It’s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,” the country’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he had been on the phone with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ahead of the strikes. Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: “It is an ongoing thing,” adding, “it must be made clear that it is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion.”
Nigerian information minister Mohammed Idris said in a statement that the US strikes used 16 guided munitions launched from medium-altitude MQ-9 Reaper drones “successfully neutralising” IS elements attempting to penetrate Nigeria through the Sahel. Both countries said the strikes targeted militants linked to the Islamic State group, without providing details. The Department of Defense’s US Africa Command said “multiple ISIS terrorists” were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto. Residents in Sokoto told AFP they were shocked by the blasts, saying some strikes hit a town that was not a militant stronghold.
Nigeria’s armed groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast but have made inroads into the northwest. Researchers have recently linked some members of an armed group known as Lakurawa — the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State — to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighbouring Niger and Mali. Other analysts have disputed those links. “We initially thought it was (an) attack by Lakurawa,” said Haruna Kallah, a resident of Jabo town. That the explosions were in fact the result of a US strike “surprised us because this area has never been a Lakurawa enclave.” Tukur Shehu, a resident of Tangaza, a neighbouring district, said two strikes targeted villages known to house Lakurawa camps from where they launch attacks and keep hostages.
While public opinion on the strikes appeared split, the Nigerian government publicly welcomed them. “I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘No,'” said Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, an NGO. Nigerian authorities are keen to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel told AFP, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim.” Security analyst Brant Philip said the results of the strikes were “not significant, but much is expected soon.” tba-sn-nro-str-abu/jh/msp/bgs
© 2024 AFP
