Gallery contains 1 image × Photo 1 of 1 U.S. Forces Conduct Strikes Supporting Somali National Army, Targeting al Shabaab Photo by: U.S. Africa Command Public Affairs  At the direction of the President of the United States and the Secretary of War, and in coordination with Nigerian authorities, U.S. Africa Command conducted strikes against ISIS terrorists in Nigeria on Dec. 25, 2025, in Sokoto State.The command’s initial assessment is that multiple ISIS terrorists were killed in the ISIS camps.“U.S. Africa Command is working with Nigerian and regional partners to increase counterterrorism cooperation efforts related to on-going violence and threats against innocent lives,” said Gen. Dagvin Anderson, commander, U.S. Africa Command. “Our goal is to protect Americans and to disrupt violent extremist organizations wherever they are.”U.S. Africa Command will continue to assess the results of the operation and will provide additional information as appropriate. Specific details about the operation will not be released in order to ensure operational security.”

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! 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. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing. Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. 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. DONALD J. TRUMPPRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end. The @DeptofWar is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight — on Christmas. More to come… Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation. Merry Christmas!

The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end. The @DeptofWar is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight — on Christmas. More to come… Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation. Merry Christmas!

President Donald Trump said Thursday he’d ordered a deadly strike on Islamic State terrorists in Nigeria, who he has accused of persecuting Christians in the country. In a post on social media, Trump said he’d directed a “powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” who he said had been killing innocent Christians. US Africa Command said it conducted the strikes in Sokoto state, which borders Niger to the north, “in coordination with Nigerian authorities.” AFRICOM’s initial assessment is that “multiple ISIS terrorists were killed in the ISIS camps,” according to a news release. A US official told CNN the strikes included Tomahawk missiles fired from a Navy vessel that struck two ISIS camps. In an earlier statement posted on X on Thursday, which was later deleted, AFRICOM said it had conducted the attack at the request of Nigerian authorities. CNN has reached out to AFRICOM and the White House for additional comment. In a separate post on social media, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said there was “more to come,” without expanding further and added he was “grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation.” Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar told CNN Friday that he had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio prior to the strike and that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu gave the “go ahead.” “This is not about religion. It is about Nigerians, innocent civilians, and the wider region as a whole,” Tuggar said. Speaking of the wider terrorism threat facing Western Africa – particularly in the Sahel region, which has marked the fastest growth in violent extremist activity on the continent – Tuggar said: “When you talk about the Sahel, (the) majority are Muslims. They’re not Christians.” “Whoever is prepared to work with us to fight terrorism, we’re ready, willing and able,” he said, later adding: “We demonstrated this yesterday.” Trump has focused for the last several months on the plight of Christians in Nigeria, including calling on Hegseth in November to “prepare for possible action” and warning the US would enter Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” to protect the Christian population of Africa’s most populous country. “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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday evening. “The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.” “Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. 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,” concluded the president, who is spending the Christmas holiday at his estate in Palm Beach. Tuggar told CNN: “We’re not going to dwell or pour over forensically on what has been said – or what hasn’t been said,” stressing that Nigeria’s focus is “to fight against terrorism, to stop the terrorists from killing innocent Nigerians, be (they) Muslim, Christian, atheist, whatever religion.” Security analysts said Lakurawa, a lesser-known group prominent in northwestern states, could have been the target of Thursday’s strikes. Lakurawa has become increasingly deadly this year, often targeting remote communities and security forces and hiding in the forests between states, the news agency Reuters reported. In January, Nigeria’s authorities declared the group a terrorist organization, and banned its activities nationwide. Nigerian Muslims have been victims of targeted attacks by Islamist groups seeking to impose their extreme interpretation of Islamic law. Tuggar did not say which group had been targeted in the attack. On Christmas Eve, Tinubu shared a “Christmas Goodwill Message” in which he wished Christians across his nation and the world a merry Christmas and prayed for peace among individuals of differing religious beliefs. “I stand committed to doing everything within my power to enshrine religious freedom in Nigeria and to protect Christians, Muslims, and all Nigerians from violence,” Tinubu said in a post on X. The West African nation has grappled for years with deep-rooted security problems that are driven by various factors, including religiously motivated attacks. Observers say other violent conflicts arise from communal and ethnic tensions, as well as disputes between farmers and herders over limited access to natural resources. Militants have targeted Christian and Muslim communities The plight of Nigeria’s Christians has been an animating subject for American conservatives for years, with some of Trump’s top allies, including Sen. Ted Cruz, in recent months calling for US intervention after claiming Nigeria’s government wasn’t doing enough to prevent attacks on Christians. In the fall, Trump accused Nigeria of religious freedom violations claiming that “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria” and designating the nation as a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act. The label is a suggestion that his administration has found that Nigeria has engaged in or tolerated “systematic, ongoing, (and) egregious violations of religious freedom.” Both Christians and Muslims — the two main religious groups in the country of more than 230 million people — have been victims of attacks by radical Islamists, experts and analysts say. Oluwole Oyewale, a Dakar-based African security analyst, told CNN Friday that Trump’s “binary framing of the issue as attacks targeting Christians does not resonate with the reality on the ground.” “In a country that is largely divided – not only politically, but in terms of religion – these are serious connotations in terms of how people view this. And it goes in a long way to actually open the fault lines of division that already exist in the country,” Oyewale said. Trump has cast himself a peacemaker, and entered office vowing to limit US military intervention abroad. Since returning to power, however, he has also ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and overseen a massive military buildup around Venezuela, with the threat of strikes on land there. This story has been updated with additional details. CNN’s Aleena Fayaz and Zain Asher contributed to this report.

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe attack comes after President Trump ordered the Defense Department last month to prepare to intervene militarily in Nigeria to protect Christians from Islamic militants.Gunmen attacked the Christ Apostolic Church in Kwara State, Nigeria, in November.Credit...Abdullahi Dare Akogun/ReutersDec. 25, 2025The United States launched a number of strikes against the Islamic State in northwestern Nigeria, President Trump announced on Thursday, the latest American military campaign against a nonstate adversary — in this case, Islamic jihadis who the president asserts have been slaughtering Christians.Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social that “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!”The strike involved more than a dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles fired off a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea, hitting insurgents in two ISIS camps in northwest Nigeria’s Sokoto State, according to a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. The operation was done in coordination with the Nigerian military, the official said.In a statement, U.S. Africa Command said its initial assessment concluded that “multiple” ISIS terrorists were killed in the strike.“U.S. Africa Command is working with our Nigerian and regional partners to increase counter terrorism cooperation efforts related to ongoing violence and threats against innocent lives,” Gen. Dagvin Anderson, the commander of U.S. Africa Command, said in a statement. “Our goal is to protect Americans and disrupt violent extremist organizations wherever they are.”The attack occurred in a region along the border with Niger, where a branch of ISIS called the Islamic State-Sahel has been attacking both government forces and civilians, according to Caleb Weiss, a counterterrorism analyst and editor with FDD’s Long War Journal.What you should know. The Times makes a careful decision any time it uses an anonymous source. The information the source supplies must be newsworthy and give readers genuine insight.The U.S. operation inside Africa’s most populous nation followed months of growing allegations by Christian evangelical groups and senior Republicans that Christians were being targeted in widespread violence.An insurgency there has gone on for more than a decade, killing thousands of Christians and Muslims across sectarian lines. The Nigerian authorities have rejected allegations of a Christian genocide, noting that the web of violent armed groups, with different motives and spread across the country, kills as many Muslims as Christians.However, Nigerian officials have stepped up engagement with the U.S. in recent weeks, after Mr. Trump ordered the Defense Department in November to prepare to intervene militarily in Nigeria to protect Christians.The Christmas Day attack came after the U.S. had been conducting intelligence-gathering surveillance flights over large parts of Nigeria since late November, according to the military official.On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a post on social media, “The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end.”“The @DeptofWar is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight — on Christmas,” he added. “More to come…”Kimiebi Ebienfa, the spokesman for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a post that “the precision strikes on terrorist targets in Nigeria were carried out in coordination with the Nigerian government.”ImagePresident Trump had ordered the Defense Department last month to prepare to intervene in Nigeria to protect Christians.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times“Terrorist violence in any form — whether directed at Christians, Muslims, or other communities — remains an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security,” he added.The strikes in Nigeria mark the second time in a week that Mr. Trump has ordered American military retaliation against a branch of the Islamic State. Last week, the United States carried out dozens of airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, fulfilling the president’s vow to avenge the deaths of two Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter killed in a terrorist attack there earlier in the month.U.S. Africa Command, responding to Mr. Trump’s orders, in November drew up options for targeting insurgents in Nigeria and forwarded them to the Pentagon and the White House. The options included airstrikes on the few known compounds in northern Nigeria inhabited by militant groups, officials said.But even as the plans were being drawn up, American military officials said it was doubtful they would have much long-term impact because of the entrenched nature of the conflict.The violence in the northwest region, where the strikes occurred, is driven in large part by armed bandits and gangs kidnapping for ransom. The insurgency is concentrated in the northeast, where jihadist groups like the notorious Boko Haram and its now more powerful splinter, the Islamic State West Africa Province, an affiliate of the Islamic State group, have killed tens of thousands of civilians over the past decade.Nigeria is not officially at war, but more people are killed there than in most war-torn countries. More than 12,000 people were killed by various violent groups this year alone, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a conflict monitoring group.On Wednesday, a suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device during evening prayers in a mosque at a market in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, in the northeast of Nigeria. Nigerian government officials said five were killed and dozens injured, though local media said at least 12 people were buried on Thursday, citing residents.Mr. Trump, in his Truth Social post, said that “under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper.” He added: “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.”Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.Saikou Jammeh is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Dakar, Senegal.Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.Related ContentAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSave on The Times with our best offer: $1/week for your first year.Final days to save$1/week for your first six months year.Billed as $4 every four weeks, then $25 thereafter.Learn more

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Jaroslav LukivandSean SeddonUS Department of DefenseThe US defence department posted a short video that appears to show a missile being launched from a military vesselThe US has launched strikes against militants linked to the Islamic State group (IS) in north-western Nigeria, where militants have sought to establish a foothold. Camps run by the group in Sokoto state, which lies on Nigeria's border with Niger, were hit, the US military said, adding that an "initial assessment" suggested "multiple" fatalities.US President Donald Trump said the Christmas Day strikes had been "deadly" and labelled the group "terrorist scum", saying it had been "targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians".Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar told the BBC it was a "joint operation" and had "nothing to do with a particular religion".Tuggar said the strikes had been planned "for quite some time" using intelligence provided by Nigeria. He also did not rule out further strikes. Referencing the timing of the strikes - which took place late on Thursday - he said they did not have "anything to do with Christmas, it could be any other day - it is to do with attacking terrorists who have been killing Nigerians". The Nigerian government has for years been fighting an array of jihadist groups, which includes Boko Haram and IS-linked factions, but largely in the north-east, hundreds of miles away from Sokoto state.A resident in the village of Jabo, Haruna Kallah, told AFP news agency: "We heard a loud explosion which shook the whole town and everyone was scared." Another local resident, Umar Jabo, told BBC News : "Everyone thought it was a plane. It crashed in fields."His comment was backed up by social media images that showed people standing in a field filming the burning aftermath of the attack.Umar Jabo denied any IS fighters had been killed: "Here in Jabo, we live peacefully, and there is no conflict between us and Christians."The Trump administration has previously accused the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians from jihadist attacks and has claimed a "genocide" is being perpetrated.Trump has labelled Nigeria a "country of particular concern", a designation used by the US state department that provides for sanctions against countries "engaged in severe violations of religious freedom".The US military was ordered to prepare to intervene in Nigeria in November.At the time, an adviser to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu told BBC News that militants had targeted people "across faiths", and said any US military action should be carried out jointly. Nigeria is Africa's most populous country, with about 220 million people, divided roughly evenly between Christian and Muslims.In a social media post late on Christmas Day confirming the strikes, Trump said that he would "not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper".US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that he was "grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation". "Merry Christmas!" he added, writing on X.The Pentagon later posted a short video that appeared to show a missile being launched from a ship.Militants allied to IS have sought to establish a presence in two north-western states, while a separate IS-linked group has a stronghold in north-eastern BornoOn Friday morning, the Nigerian foreign ministry said authorities were engaged in "security co-operation with international partners, including the United States of America, in addressing the persistent threat of terrorist and violent extremism"."This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West," the statement added.Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and IS-linked offshoots have wrought havoc in north-eastern Nigeria for more than a decade, killing thousands of people.Most victims have been Muslims, according to Acled, a group that analyses political violence around the world.Nigerian human rights lawyer and conflict analyst Bulama Bukati speculated that Thursday's strikes had targeted a relatively new IS-aligned splinter group, which originated in the Sahel region and has recently moved its fighters to Nigeria.The largest IS-linked group in Nigeria - Islamic State West Africa Province - operates in the north-east of the country, he told BBC World Service, while the smaller group - known locally as Lakurawa - has sought to establish a base in north-western Sokoto state. He continued: "They started slipping into Nigeria in 2018 but over the past 18 months or two years they established camps in Sokoto state and Kebbi state."They have been launching attacks and imposing their social laws over people in Sokoto state over the past 18 months or so."Local lawmaker Bashar Isah Jabo was adamant that the village had no IS or Lakurawa members at all, and he said the area where the missile fell was less than 500m (1,600ft) from a hospital.According to BBC Monitoring, a pro-IS social media channel has been reporting on regular US reconnaissance flights in Sokoto, as well as in the north-eastern state of Borno, where the Nigeria's largest IS-linked group has its stronghold. The Nigeria strikes are the second major US intervention targeting IS in recent weeks.Last week, the US said it had carried out a "massive strike" against IS in Syria.US Central Command (Centcom) said fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery had struck more than 70 targets. Aircraft from Jordan were also involved.Those strikes were launched in retaliation for the killing of three Americans - two soldiers and a civilian interpreter - in an ambush.

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has warned of new strikes against Islamic State targets in north-western Nigeria, hours after the US military took action against militant camps in what Donald Trump has characterised as efforts to stop the killing of Christians.Hegseth wrote on X: “The president was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end. The [Pentagon] is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight – on Christmas. More to come …“Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation. Merry Christmas!”Nigeria’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, said on Friday that the US strikes, which came after Trump had locked the countries in a diplomatic dispute when he accused Nigeria’s government of failing to stop Christians being killed in the country, were “part of joint ongoing operations”.Nigeria is officially secular and its population is almost evenly split between Muslims (53%) and Christians (45%). Violence against Christians has drawn attention from the religious right in the US, which has framed it as persecution. Nigeria’s government has pointed out that armed groups target Christians and Muslims.Nigeria provided the intelligence for the airstrikes in Sokoto state, Tuggar told the country’s Channels Television on Friday. He said he had spoken to his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, for 19 minutes, then called the Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu, to get his go-ahead, before speaking to Rubio again for another five minutes.“We have been working closely with the Americans,” Tuggar said. “This is what we’ve always been hoping for, to work with the Americans, to work with other countries, to combat terrorism, to stop the death of innocent Nigerians … It’s a collaborative effort.”The US military’s Africa Command (Africom) said the strikes in Sokoto state had been carried out in coordination with Nigerian authorities. An earlier Africom statement posted on X and then removed said they had been conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities.Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Thursday: “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!“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. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.”Neither the US nor the Nigerian authorities have said if anyone was killed in the airstrikes. Asked if there would be more, Tuggar said: “You can call it a new phase of an old conflict. For us it is something that is ongoing.”Residents of the village of Jabo in Sokoto, where the strike hit, on Friday described experiencing panic and confusion as the US missiles hit. “As it approached our area, the heat became intense,” Abubakar Sani told the Associated Press. “The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before.”Farmer Sanusi Madabo said sky glowed a bright red for hours from what he only later learned was a US airstrike. “It was almost like daytime,” he said.US planes conducted surveillance missions over the region earlier this month. It is believed they were using an airport in neighbouring Ghana as a base.Forests in Sokoto, which is bordered by Niger to the north, have been used as bases by gangs of armed bandits and members of Islamic State – Sahel Province (ISSP) , known locally as Lakurawa. Some analysts say the IS branch started when a group of herders joined together to fight bandits in the absence of state support. The state is mostly Muslim.Clashes between Muslim herders and predominantly Christian farming communities in parts of Nigeria have been aggravated by ethnicity and religion, but their roots lie in competition for land and water.Priests and pastors have increasingly been kidnapped for ransom but some experts say this may be a trend driven by criminal incentives rather than religious discrimination.Tuggar said the operation was about “protecting Nigerians and innocent lives”, not one religion or another. “The president emphasised yesterday, before he gave it the go-ahead, that it must be made clear that … it is a joint operation,” he said. “It is not targeting any religion, nor is it simply in the name of one religion or another.”A day before the Sokoto strikes, a Christmas Eve suicide bombing at a mosque in north-east Nigeria killed at least five people and left more than 30 seriously injured. The Nigerian army attributed the attack to the jihadist group Boko Haram, which has waged an insurgency in the region for almost two decades, mostly separate to the violence in the north-west.There have been almost 6,000 incidents of violence in Nigeria in 2025, about half of them attacks targeting civilians, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), a non-profit conflict monitor. The state of Katsina, another Muslim-majority state two states to the east of Sokoto, had the highest number of incidents at 706. Sokoto had the fourth highest, 353.Trump positioned himself as the “candidate of peace” in the 2024 US presidential election, campaigning on a promise of extricating Washington from decades of “endless wars”.However, the first year of his second term in the White House has been notable for a number of military interventions overseas, with strikes on countries including Yemen, Iran and Syria, as well as a huge military buildup in the Caribbean targeting Venezuela.

(ASSOCIATED PRESS) The United States airstrikes that targeted Islamic State group militants in northwestern Nigeria on Thursday marked a major escalation in an offensive that the West African's overstretched military has struggled with for years. U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media that the “powerful and deadly” strikes in the state of Sokoto were carried out against IS gunmen who were “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.” Residents and security analysts have said Nigeria’s security crisis affects both Christians, predominant in the south, and Muslims, who are the majority in the north. Nigeria, which is battling multiple armed groups, said the U.S. strikes were part of an exchange of intelligence and strategic coordination between the two countries. The Associated Press could not confirm the extent of the strikes' impact. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a post on X about the airstrikes, said: “More to come...”

38 UpdatesAuto-updates‘We have never experienced anything like this before,’ says local residentIn the Nigerian village of Jabo, Abubakar Sani, who lives a few houses from the scene of the explosion due to the US strikes, said the heat from the strike became “intense”.“Our rooms began to shake, and then fire broke out,” he told The Associated Press news agency.“The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before,” Sani added.For Balira Sa’idu, 17, the strikes worried her as she prepares to get married.“I am supposed to be thinking about my wedding, but right now I am panicking,” Sa’idu told the AP.“The strike has changed everything. My family is afraid, and I don’t even know if it is safe to continue with the wedding plan in Jabo,” she added.US goal behind Nigeria strikes remains unclear until Pentagon briefingRichard Weitz, senior fellow at NATO Defense College, says there has been “concern” in the international security community in recent months that ISIS-affiliated groups were spreading across Nigeria.“The northwest was seen as one possible area where they’re going to be gaining strength, so these could be seen as preemptive containment demonstrative strikes. If it’s followed up further, support for the Nigerian government and so on …“We don’t know precise details yet, we’re waiting for a Pentagon briefing or something like that; but I think the general idea was you hit a group that was vulnerable to these kinds of strikes that could pose a threat to civilians,” he added.Weitz explained that while the US’s aims remain unclear, the idea is to “weaken these groups – you can’t destroy them totally despite air strikes”.“The larger goal of the US military in Nigeria will become clear in the coming days,” he added.WATCH: ‘US air strikes in Nigeria are late but needed’Watch the comments by analyst Ebenezer Obadare below:Local official says US strikes likely to have hit fightersIsa Salihu, the chairman of the Tangaza local government in Sokoto State, has told Nigeria’s Premium Times newspaper that one of the areas hit by a US strike in the state was a “primary route” for fighters and is most likely to have hit them.The areas struck are believed to be hideouts of fighters along the Nigeria-Niger border in Sokoto, the official was quoted as saying.Salihu stressed that casualty figures have not been confirmed pending a formal security briefing, according to the newspaper.“That area serves as their primary route when entering from the Niger Republic,” Salihu reportedly said.“They frequent these zones and have established camps in the dense forests near the border.”Photos: Police barricade scene of US attack in SokotoPolice barricade the site of the US strike in Jabo, Sokoto State, northwestern Nigeria, December 26, 2025 [Qosim Suleiman/Al Jazeera][Qosim Suleiman/Al Jazeera]‘Trump would not have accepted a “no” from Nigeria’Malik Samuel, an Abuja-based researcher for Good Governance Africa, has questioned whether Nigeria had a real choice to oppose the US strike in its Sokoto State.“I think Trump would not have accepted a ‘no’ from Nigeria,” Samuel told AFP.Nigerian authorities are eager to be seen as cooperating with the US, Samuel added, even though “both the perpetrators and the victims in the northwest are overwhelmingly Muslim”.Trump’s military threat led to US-Nigeria cooperationKabir Adamu, managing director of Abuja-based Beacon Security and Intelligence Ltd, says the talks over potential cooperation between Washington and Abuja against the fighters in northern Nigeria started after Trump threatened to take unilateral military action in the country.“After Trump threatened to come guns blazing in Nigeria, we saw a Nigerian delegation visit the US,” Kabir told Reuters.“The attorney general was involved, and agreements were signed. Then we learned of US surveillance missions mapping terrorist locations.”Nigeria’s government had responded to Trump’s military threat by saying it intended to work with Washington against the fighters while rejecting US language that suggested Christians were in particular peril.Trump’s Republican allies laud Nigeria strikeThe supposed persecution of Christians in Nigeria has become a rallying cry for right-wing activists and lawmakers in the US in recent months.Although Nigerian authorities and analysts have stressed that armed groups in the country target Muslims and Christians alike, Trump and his allies have been promoting a narrative that Muslims are oppressing and killing Christians in the West African country.The Christmas Day strike allows Trump to present himself as a protector of Christians.His fellow Republicans have already lined up to praise the move.“We cannot turn a blind eye to Islamist terrorists conducting genocide against Christians in Nigeria and nearby area,” Congressman Don Bacon wrote in a social media post.“This military action is right. To intervene saves innocent lives. We praise our military for working around the clock to include Christmas.”Get instant alerts and updates based on your interests. Be the first to know when big stories happen.In Sokoto State, Nigerians ‘surprised’ by US strikeAcross Sokoto State, Nigerians awoke to loud blasts after the US targeted alleged ISIL (ISIS) bases in the area.For Haruna Kallah from Jabo, about 100km (60 miles) south of Sokoto City near the Niger border, the explosion from the strike “shook the whole town and everyone was scared”.“We initially thought it was an attack by Lakurawa,” the main armed group in Sokoto State, Kallah told the AFP news agency.But after learning that it was a US attack, it “surprised us because this area has never been a Lakurawa enclave and we have never had any attacks in the last two years”, Kallah said.Ayuba Abdulkarim, another Jabo resident, also told AFP that residents thought the town was under attack from Lakurawa.“Luckily no one was hurt, but fragments from the bomb caused damage to walls and roofs of nearby homes,” Abdulkarim said.US strikes ‘ultimately positive’Yinka Adegoke, the Africa editor for the news outlet Semafor, says the Nigerian government is arguing that the country is getting the support it has sought from the US for years.“It feels like the Nigerian government is finding itself in a situation where it is under duress from the Trump administration, who have their own … arguments about what is going on in Nigeria, which serve their own purpose,” Adegoke told Al Jazeera.He argued that the strikes are “ultimately positive” if they will make the northern regions safer for Nigerians by “taking out supposedly some terrorists”.Adegoke stressed there is no “strong evidence” displaying that Christians are particularly targeted in the attacks in the region, underscoring that a mosque was attacked recently in the country’s northeast.He said that places of worship are “vulnerable” targets in remote areas.“That seems to be a bigger reason for these attacks on the churches. It is insecurity for everyone,” Adegoke said.

JABO, Sokoto (AP) — Sanusi Madabo, a 40-year-old farmer in the Nigerian village of Jabo, was preparing for bed Thursday night when he heard a loud noise that sounded like a plane crashing. He rushed outside his mud house with his wife to see the sky glowing a bright red.The light burned bright for hours, Madabo said: “It was almost like daytime.”He did not learn until later that he had witnessed a U.S attack on an alleged Islamic State camp. U.S. President Donald Trump announced late Thursday that the U.S had launched a “powerful and deadly strike” against “ISIS Terrorist Scum in north-west Nigeria.” The Nigerian government has since confirmed the strike was a joint collaboration with the U.S government. Residents of Jabo, a village in the northwestern Nigerian state of Sokoto, told The Associated Press in interviews Friday that they were seized with panic and confusion at the airstrikes. Police Anti-Bomb squad inspect the site of a U.S. airstrike in Northwest, Jabo, Nigeria, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/ Tunde Omolehin) They also said the village had never experienced a terror attack, even though attacks regularly occur in neighboring villages.“As it approached our area, the heat became intense,” recalled Abubakar Sani, who lives just a few houses from the scene of the explosion. “Our rooms began to shake, and then fire broke out,” he told the AP. “The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before.”The Nigerian military did not respond to an AP request asking how many locations were targeted. It’s a ‘new phase of an old conflict’The strikes are the outcome of a months-long tense diplomatic clash between the West African nation and the U.S. that has evolved to result in a new form of cooperation.The Trump administration has been claiming that Nigeria is witnessing a Christian genocide, a claim the Nigerian government has rejected, and which caused initial tensions.But now Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the strikes resulted from intelligence sharing and strategic coordination between the two governments. Yusuf Tuggar, Nigeria’s foreign minister, called the airstrikes a “new phase of an old conflict” and said he expected more strikes to follow. “For us, it is something that has been ongoing,” Tuggar added, referring to attacks that have targeted Christians and Muslims in Nigeria for years. People visit the site of a U.S. airstrike in Northwest, Jabo, Nigeria, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/ Tunde Omolehin) Bulama Burkati, a security analyst on sub-Saharan Africa at the Tony Blair Institute, said the fear of residents is compounded by a lack of information.Residents say there were no casualties, and security operatives have cordoned off the area.But the Nigerian government has yet to release information about the militants who were targeted and the post-strike assessment of casualties. “What can help in dousing the tension is for the American and Nigerian governments to declare who was targeted, what was attacked, and what has happened so far,” Burkati said. Such information is “still missing, and the more opaque the governments are, the more panic there would be on the ground, and that is what will escalate tension.”Foreign fighters operated in NigeriaAnalysts say the strikes might have been intended for the Lakurawa group, a relatively new entrant to Nigeria’s complex security crisis. The group’s first attack was recorded around 2018 in the northwestern region before the Nigerian government officially announced its presence last year. The composition of the group has been documented by security researchers as primarily consisting of foreigners from the Sahel region of Africa.However, experts say ties between the Lakurawa group and the Islamic State are unproven. The Islamic State West African Province, a branch of ISIS in Nigeria, has its strongholds in the northeastern part of the country, where it is currently involved in a power struggle with its parent organisation, Boko Haram.“What might have happened is that, working with the American government, Nigeria identified Lakurawa as a threat and identified camps that belong to the group,” Burkati said. Either way, the local people feel vulnerable. A boy picks debris at the site of a U.S. airstrike in Northwest, Jabo, Nigeria, Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/ Tunde Omolehin) Aliyu Garba, a traditional leader in the village, told the AP that debris left by the strikes was scattered around and residents rushed to the scene before the arrival of security operatives. People picked up metal pieces hoping for valuable metal which they could trade, and he fears they could get hurt.The strikes also rattled 17-year-old Balira Sa’idu as she prepared to get married.“I am supposed to be thinking about my wedding, but right now I am panicking,” she said. “The strike has changed everything. My family is afraid, and I don’t even know if it is safe to continue with the wedding plan in Jabo.”Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria.

In a joint operation between the United States and Nigeria, a series of missile strikes against the Islamic State hit the northwestern state of Sokoto on Christmas Day, with U.S. President Donald Trump stated that the attack came at "his" direction as Commander in Chief. Meanwhile, the US Department of War released footage from the operation, describing it as a decisive strike against the terror group. It comes as the U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth confirmed the launch in a post on X, thanking the Nigerian government for cooperating with the United States. AFRICOM also reiterated the fact that both governments worked in collaboration. In the same vein, Nigeria’s Director of Defence Information said the operation was a joint effort, adding that the strikes were approved by Federal Government authorities and followed credible intelligence. Meanwhile, a new video from Sokoto shows the debris from the aftermath of the missile launch has made the rounds on social media. In another development in Abuja, dozens of people from the African Democratic Congress party protested President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's controversial new tax reform bills that are set to take effect next week. In Kaduna, a video making the rounds on social media showed angry young people attacking a Representative over his alleged defection to the All Progressives Congress and endorsing President Tinubu. Under Milestones, we celebrated the nation's Minister of Defence, General Christopher Musa, who turned 58 on Christmas Day. Finally under Entertainment, we highlighted Davido officially closing out the lineup of Flytime Festival in Lagos on Christmas Day in one of this season's most highly anticipated shows. #USNigeriaRelations #JointMilitaryOperation #CounterTerrorism #IslamicState #AFRICOM #NationalSecurity #Sokoto #MissileStrike #ChristmasDayOperation #WarOnTerror #DonaldTrump #USDepartmentOfWar #PeteHegseth #NigerianMilitary #DefenceNews #FederalGovernment #MilitaryCollaboration #IntelligenceOperations #NigeriaPolitics #AbujaProtest #ADCParty #TaxReformBill #TinubuAdministration #PoliticalProtest #Kaduna #APC #YouthProtest #PoliticalTension #ChristopherMusa #MinisterOfDefence #NigerianDefence #BirthdayMilestone #ChristmasBirthday #Davido #FlytimeFestival #Flytime2024 #LagosEvents #NigerianMusic #Afrobeats #ChristmasConcert #BreakingNews #TrendingNow #NigeriaNews #AfricaNews #ChristmasUpdates Subscribe to our Channel for high profile interviews. Follow us on Twitter at   / arisetv   | and Instagram:   / arisenewsofficial   | and Facebook:   / arisetvnews   | Check out our website www.arise.tv

Watch: Nigerians in the UK react to Trump's airstrikesWe've been speaking to Nigerians in the UK, to get their reactions to the US airstrikes in the country.Watch them speaking here... The story in 180 wordsLate last night, the US claimed to have hit IS militants in areas in northwest Nigeria.Nigeria, whose overstretched military is battling multiple armed groups, said it coordinated with the US on the strikes and the two also exchanged intelligence.Here's what Donald Trump had to say about it:His defence secretary Pete Hegseth promised there was "more to come". It's not been confirmed which group was targeted, but there are at least two IS-affiliated groups in the country:An offshoot of Boko Haram known as the Islamic State West Africa Province in the northeast;And the lesser-known Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), with a group known as Lakurawa also prominent in the northwest - security analysts have suggested this group was likely targeted.The White House says that there's a "Christian genocide" ongoing in the country, but data doesn't necessarily back up those claims.While Christian communities have suffered, data suggests violence against Muslims has been reported at a similar rate.And here, our presenter Gareth Barlow and Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir explain all you need to know... Watch: 'Palpable frustration' among Nigerians over failure to get a grip on security issuesWe've just been speaking to Bulama Bukarti, an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.He told presenter Samantha Washington that there's frustration on the ground among Nigerians over successive governments failing to resolve the security issues facing the country.But he also said the fact the Nigerian government cooperated with Washington on the strikes was key to avoiding alarm in the aftermath of last night's attacks.Watch his remarks here...' We've never seen anything like this': Locals react after their village is hit by US strikeIn our previous post, we brought you pictures from the village of Jabo, in Sokoto, where the US hit late last night. Now we can bring you the reactions of the locals too.Sanusi Madabo, a 40-year-old farmer, says he was preparing for bed when he heard a loud noise that sounded like a plane crashing.He says he rushed outside with his wife to see the sky glowing red.The light from the fire burned bright for hours, Madabo says, adding: "It was almost like daytime. "He only learned later that he had witnessed the US attack on an alleged IS camp.' Our rooms began to shake'Residents of Jabo said they felt panic and confusion after the airstrike hit their town.They also claimed their village had never experienced a terror attack - even though neighbouring settlements regularly had. "As it approached our area, the heat became intense," says Abubakar Sani, who lives just a few houses from the scene of the explosion.He adds: "Our rooms began to shake, and then fire broke out. The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before. "In pictures: Bomb squad on site of US strikesAn anti-bomb squad is on the scene in Jabo, a village in the state of Sokoto, where the US strikes landed.These are the latest pictures from there... Questions raised over motivation behind US strikes in NigeriaIndependent experts have raised questions over the apparent target of the US strike in northwest Nigeria, as well as any domestic motivation Donald Trump may have had.Kabir Adamu, managing director of Abuja-based Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, tells Reuters that a Nigerian delegation travelled to the US after Donald Trump initially threatened to intervene in the country on 1 November. "The attorney general was involved, and agreements were signed. Then we learned of US surveillance missions mapping terrorist locations," he says.However, Adamu also outlines what he believes may be partly behind the attacks:"Trump is pandering to domestic evangelical Christian objectives with his 'Christian genocide' narrative. "Check out our 9.56 post where our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir breaks down how Trump's base support in the US may react to the attacks.Adamu questions the apparent target of the attack after local media reported explosions in the village of Jabo last night. Sky News has not verified these reports.Adamu adds: "We were told the Nigerian government okayed the attack, but why Jabo when there is no record of any group there?"' Cattle theft'Confidence MacHarry, senior analyst at Lagos-based SBM Intelligence, believes that members of the Lakurawa sect, a strict Sunni Islamist movement that claims affiliation with the so-called Islamic State group, were the target of the strike.He says:"It's very likely this is the group Trump referred to when mentioning US military strikes in Nigeria. They've also been linked to widespread cattle theft, with most of the stolen animals ending up in markets along the Nigeria-Niger border. "That echoes our post at 8.44, which outlined reports the group has been tormenting the villages it was invited to protect.Explained: Trump says US strikes targeted IS - here's a reminder of who they areIt's not clear which group the US targeted in Nigeria, with a few different IS-affiliated groups in the country.Donald Trump only said they were "ISIS terrorist scum". That group - self-styled as Islamic State - emerged in Iraq and Syria and quickly created a "caliphate", declaring its rule over all Muslims.It reached its height between 2014 and 2017, when they held parts of the two countries and ruled over millions of people.It even had a base a mere 30-minute drive from Baghdad, Iraq's capital. IS tried to rule like a centralised government, and imposed its interpretation of Sharia law strictly, carrying out public executions and torture.Fighters also carried out - or influenced - attacks in dozens of cities around the world.After a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition, the caliphate eventually collapsed in Iraq and in SyriaWhere is it now? After it was driven from its bases in the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul, the group took refuge in the hinterlands of the two countries.It still has a significant presence in Syria and Iraq, parts of Africa, and in Afghanistan and Pakistan.Affiliates are active in southern parts of the Philippines, where pro-IS militants controlled the city of Marawi in 2017.IS leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify, with fighters scattered in autonomous cells.The UN reckons it has a membership of 10,000 in IS heartlands.Meanwhile, foreign fighters have joined Islamic State's Khorasan branch - which you may have seen is referred to as ISIS-K.What are its tactics? IS has always wanted to spread its extreme form of Islam, but it is now a disparate group, often operating through affiliates and sympathisers.Nonetheless, it can still carry out high-profile attacks, which it claims on its Telegram channels - a social media messaging app. There are no signs militants exchange weapons or financing.As for its leader, the US believes the group's current honcho is Abdulqadir Mumin, who heads the Somalia branch.Recent attacksPolice in Australia said IS appeared to inspire the gunmen behind the shooting attack at a Jewish Hanukkah event in Sydney's Bondi Beach, where 15 people were killed.IS continues to plot in Syria, where the government co-operates with the US-led coalition combatting the group.This month, two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in Syria by a suspected IS-sympathiser.And IS has also carried out attacks in Africa, claiming an attack in Congo in October, when 43 worshippers were killed during mass at a church.UK 'recognises significant threat' terror groups presentThe UK government has not commented on the US strikes in Nigeria, which is a Commonwealth nation.But Sky News understands from a source that the Foreign Office recognises the "significant threat" terror groups present at home and abroad, including to "vulnerable communities". Metal debris found by residents after US strikeThe US is yet to give specific details around the strikes in northwestern Nigeria overnight, such as which exact IS group it targeted.In the meantime, local residents are beginning to piece together events overnight, with some finding what appear to be fragments of a missile.You can see metal debris in the image below, taken in the village of Jabo, in Sokoto - the state where the attack happened.Strikes were a 'surprise' that may bring short-term benefit, says expertUS strikes in Nigeria would likely have come as a "surprise" to the population there, according to one regional expert.That's because Nigeria has "prided itself" on its defence policy excluding foreign intervention, says Miriam Adah, an assistant research manager for Africa at conflict monitor ACLED.Speaking to our presenter Samantha Washington, Adah added the strikes may have a short-term impact. "I do think that these strikes will have an effect in the sense that, since this is coming as a surprise, even terror groups would want to take a step back to readdress, or to re-strategise," she said. "So, I think that for the immediate [term], in the interim, we would see a decline in terrorist activities, especially in cases like Sokoto where the airstrike happened. "Could it last longer than that? Adah isn't sure. "I do not see that the airstrikes will necessarily end the situation," she said.Watch: What do we know about these strikes? It's just gone midday here in the UK, with the sun only just starting to rise on the east coast of the US.We're likely to get more reaction and developments from the states as the morning there goes on.So to tie up everything we know so far, our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir has you covered in just over two minutes... Nigeria doesn't rule out more strikes - and insists this isn't about a 'particular religion'In the post just below this one, our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir outlines why Nigeria is in a tough spot over Washington's claims of Christian persecution.As data shows in our 10.45 post, Muslims fall victim to violence in the country at least just as much.We're now seeing the Nigerian government's attempt to balance its cooperation with the US without condoning its comments around Christian massacres.Nigeria's foreign minister, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, has told the BBC the strike was a "joint operation" targeting "terrorists". And he added it "has nothing to do with a particular religion". Without naming IS, Tuggar said the operation was in the works "for quite some time" and used Nigerian intel.And he did not rule out further strikes, adding that depends on "decisions to be taken by the leadership of the two countries". Analysis: Nigeria walking tightrope between US cooperation and debunked Christian persecutionBy Yousra Elbagir, Africa correspondentNigeria's government is walking a tightrope.It has publicly acknowledged security co-ordination with the US leading to "precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by airstrikes in the northwest". That's while it attempts to create distance from the debunked claims of Nigerian Christian persecution that come from the Oval Office in conjunction with these strikes, and reiterating: "Terrorist violence in any form whether directed at Christians, Muslims, or other communities remains an affront to Nigeria's values and to international peace and security. "Terror attacks carried out by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) are known to indiscriminately target Muslims and Christians across northeast and northwest Nigeria.On Christmas Eve, a bomb exploded in a packed mosque in the capital of Borno state, killing at least five people (see 8.08). But Donald Trump has consistently claimed that ISIS is persecuting Christians there and, after the US strikes, posted on social media: ⁠"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! "The Nigerian government will have to work to assure its public that security cooperation with the US does not mean they are lending credibility to these claims.The Trump administration will also have to pacify its base.This is the third documented US foreign military intervention against ISIS in the span of a week.The US military carried out strikes in Syria, Somalia and, now, Nigeria since 19 December - a pattern that could fuel frustration among Trump supporters who denounce US involvement in foreign wars.Are Christians uniquely persecuted in Nigeria? Not according to the dataDonald Trump's administration and his supporters have for a few months now been making claims around Christian massacres in Nigeria.While it is true that Christian communities have suffered in the country - where multiple armed groups operate - data suggests Muslim violence has been reported at a similar rate.This map shows incidents are fairly evenly spread across Muslim and Christian areas.And when it comes to attacks on religious sites, more have been reported at mosques over the past year than at churches.Before 2025, incidents at churches were more common.Nigeria strikes happened less than a week after operation in SyriaThese strikes on Nigeria were made less than a week after a US attack in Syria, as outlined in the post just below this one.That operation had a similar stated objective to last night's - to "eliminate ISIS fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites". A US official described it as a "large-scale" strike that hit 70 targets in areas across central Syria.It came after three US citizens - two National Guard members and a civilian interpreter - were killed in an attack in the Syrian desert on 13 December. "This is not the beginning of a war - it is a declaration of vengeance," Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, said in a social media post. "The United States of America, under President Trump's leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people. "Why did the US target Syria? Here's Yousra Elbagir to get you up to speed... Watch: Trump promised 'America first' - so how will his base react to more foreign intervention? It's been a busy week on the world stage for Donald Trump, and perhaps not in ways his supporters envisaged less than a year into his second term.Overnight strikes in Nigeria were launched after a similar operation in Syria, while tensions with Venezuela continue to rise.In less than 45 seconds, our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir breaks down the issue he may face domestically as a result of these strikes in Nigeria.Nigerian minister admitted 'religious issues' - but denied Trump claimsTo put these developments into some more context, let's go back to Donald Trump's remarks last month.In early November, he said the US military "could be" deployed to Nigeria to stop what he described as the mass killing of Christians.That came after he said Christianity is "facing an existential threat" in the country.Senator Ted Cruz, a high-profile Republican, took it further, claiming Nigerian officials are allowing a "Christian genocide". As we've outlined already, analysts actually say Muslims have been dying in greater numbers as the country grapples with militant groups.We spoke to Nigeria's information and national orientation minister Mohammed Idris in the days after those comments from the US.Speaking on The World with Yalda Hakim, he said the country does have "religious issues" - but people are being killed in mosques as well as churches.Watch his interview back in the video below... Analysis: Nigeria in difficult position with TrumpNigeria coordinated with the US during its strikes in the northwest overnight.As we've already outlined, the country's military is stretched in its battle against multiple armed groups (see 7.39). The result of that is a security crisis that has killed Christians as well as Muslims.But with Donald Trump's team solely highlighting Christian suffering, our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir says the Nigerian government is in a tough spot. "I think the Nigerian government is in a very difficult position," she says. "It may be welcoming this coordination with the US and trying to get ahead of their terrorism problem - their ISIS problem... that they've suffered from for many years - but still not wanting to kind of confirm these claims that Christians in Nigeria are persecuted more than any other religious group. "Muslim communities, she points out, have been targeted as "violently and viciously" as their Christian neighbours have been. "So, I think it's a difficult time, where these strikes are obviously going to be loudly celebrated by the Trump administration, where Nigerian authorities want to increase coordination, cooperation," Elbagir adds. "But, also, they don't want to confirm or give any credibility to claims of a Christian genocide that are simply not true. "Possible targets of US strikes torment the villages that invited them to provide securityThe US has not said exactly which group it targeted overnight, with Donald Trump only saying they went after "ISIS terrorist scum". But security analysts have posited the likely target was members of Lakurawa.This group is prominent in the northwest, where the strikes happened.Multiple analysts say Lakurawa has been active there since around 2017, when it was invited by traditional authorities in Sokoto state to protect their communities from bandits.According to James Barnett, an Africa researcher with the Washington-based Hudson Institute, the militants "overstayed their welcome, clashing with some of the community leaders... and enforcing a harsh interpretation of sharia law that alienated much of the rural population". Malik Samuel, a Nigerian security researcher with Good Governance Africa, said communities now "openly say that Lakurawa are more oppressive and dangerous than the bandits they claim to protect them from". He added Lakurawa controls territories in Sokoto and Kebbi states, and has become known for killings, kidnapping, rape and armed robbery.Five were killed in earlier attack on MosqueWhile Washington's overnight attack on IS targets in Nigeria are, it said, a defence of Christians in the country, Muslims have suffered a security crisis as well.Just two days ago, at least five worshippers were killed and 35 others injured when a suspected suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria's Borno state, in the northeast.Police said it happened during evening prayers, while no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.Islamist insurgents Boko Haram and its ISWAP faction (see 7.39 for more on them) have waged a 15-year campaign of violence targeting civilians, mosques and markets in the northeast.Witnesses at al Adum mosque described scenes of panic as victims were rushed to hospital.Last August, gunmen attacked a mosque and nearby homes in the northwestern state of Katsina, killing at least 50, according to local officials and residents.For context: Nigeria is a country of more than 200 million people, which is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.An Islamist insurgency has dragged on for over 15 years and is largely confined to the northeast of the country, which is majority Muslim.While Christians have been killed, most of the victims have been Muslims, analysts say.Mapped: Where were the strikes in Nigeria?The US said its attacks targeted IS militants in the northwest, in a state called Sokoto.This is where - as we outlined at 7.39 - the IS-affiliated Lakurawa operates.

Watch: Nigerians in the UK react to Trump's airstrikesWe've been speaking to Nigerians in the UK, to get their reactions to the US airstrikes in the country.Watch them speaking here...The story in 180 wordsLate last night, the US claimed to have hit IS militants in areas in northwest Nigeria.Nigeria, whose overstretched military is battling multiple armed groups, said it coordinated with the US on the strikes and the two also exchanged intelligence.Here's what Donald Trump had to say about it:His defence secretary Pete Hegseth promised there was "more to come".It's not been confirmed which group was targeted, but there are at least two IS-affiliated groups in the country:An offshoot of Boko Haram known as the Islamic State West Africa Province in the northeast;And the lesser-known Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), with a group known as Lakurawa also prominent in the northwest - security analysts have suggested this group was likely targeted.The White House says that there's a "Christian genocide" ongoing in the country, but data doesn't necessarily back up those claims.While Christian communities have suffered, data suggests violence against Muslims has been reported at a similar rate.And here, our presenter Gareth Barlow and Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir explain all you need to know...Watch: 'Palpable frustration' among Nigerians over failure to get a grip on security issuesWe've just been speaking to Bulama Bukarti, an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.He told presenter Samantha Washington that there's frustration on the ground among Nigerians over successive governments failing to resolve the security issues facing the country.But he also said the fact the Nigerian government cooperated with Washington on the strikes was key to avoiding alarm in the aftermath of last night's attacks.Watch his remarks here...'We've never seen anything like this': Locals react after their village is hit by US strikeIn our previous post, we brought you pictures from the village of Jabo, in Sokoto, where the US hit late last night. Now we can bring you the reactions of the locals too.Sanusi Madabo, a 40-year-old farmer, says he was preparing for bed when he heard a loud noise that sounded like a plane crashing.He says he rushed outside with his wife to see the sky glowing red.The light from the fire burned bright for hours, Madabo says, adding: "It was almost like daytime."He only learned later that he had witnessed the US attack on an alleged IS camp.'Our rooms began to shake'Residents of Jabo said they felt panic and confusion after the airstrike hit their town.They also claimed their village had never experienced a terror attack - even though neighbouring settlements regularly had."As it approached our area, the heat became intense," says Abubakar Sani, who lives just a few houses from the scene of the explosion.He adds: "Our rooms began to shake, and then fire broke out. The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before."In pictures: Bomb squad on site of US strikesAn anti-bomb squad is on the scene in Jabo, a village in the state of Sokoto, where the US strikes landed.These are the latest pictures from there...Questions raised over motivation behind US strikes in NigeriaIndependent experts have raised questions over the apparent target of the US strike in northwest Nigeria, as well as any domestic motivation Donald Trump may have had.Kabir Adamu, managing director of Abuja-based Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited, tells Reuters that a Nigerian delegation travelled to the US after Donald Trump initially threatened to intervene in the country on 1 November."The attorney general was involved, and agreements were signed. Then we learned of US surveillance missions mapping terrorist locations," he says.However, Adamu also outlines what he believes may be partly behind the attacks:"Trump is pandering to domestic evangelical Christian objectives with his 'Christian genocide' narrative."Check out our 9.56 post where our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir breaks down how Trump's base support in the US may react to the attacks.Adamu questions the apparent target of the attack after local media reported explosions in the village of Jabo last night. Sky News has not verified these reports.Adamu adds: "We were told the Nigerian government okayed the attack, but why Jabo when there is no record of any group there?"'Cattle theft'Confidence MacHarry, senior analyst at Lagos-based SBM Intelligence, believes that members of the Lakurawa sect, a strict Sunni Islamist movement that claims affiliation with the so-called Islamic State group, were the target of the strike.He says:"It's very likely this is the group Trump referred to when mentioning US military strikes in Nigeria. They've also been linked to widespread cattle theft, with most of the stolen animals ending up in markets along the Nigeria-Niger border."That echoes our post at 8.44, which outlined reports the group has been tormenting the villages it was invited to protect.Explained: Trump says US strikes targeted IS - here's a reminder of who they areIt's not clear which group the US targeted in Nigeria, with a few different IS-affiliated groups in the country.Donald Trump only said they were "ISIS terrorist scum".That group - self-styled as Islamic State - emerged in Iraq and Syria and quickly created a "caliphate", declaring its rule over all Muslims.It reached its height between 2014 and 2017, when they held parts of the two countries and ruled over millions of people.It even had a base a mere 30-minute drive from Baghdad, Iraq's capital. IS tried to rule like a centralised government, and imposed its interpretation of Sharia law strictly, carrying out public executions and torture.Fighters also carried out - or influenced - attacks in dozens of cities around the world.After a sustained military campaign by a US-led coalition, the caliphate eventually collapsed in Iraq and in SyriaWhere is it now?After it was driven from its bases in the Syrian city of Raqqa and the Iraqi city of Mosul, the group took refuge in the hinterlands of the two countries.It still has a significant presence in Syria and Iraq, parts of Africa, and in Afghanistan and Pakistan.Affiliates are active in southern parts of the Philippines, where pro-IS militants controlled the city of Marawi in 2017.IS leadership is clandestine and its overall size is hard to quantify, with fighters scattered in autonomous cells.The UN reckons it has a membership of 10,000 in IS heartlands.Meanwhile, foreign fighters have joined Islamic State's Khorasan branch - which you may have seen is referred to as ISIS-K.What are its tactics?IS has always wanted to spread its extreme form of Islam, but it is now a disparate group, often operating through affiliates and sympathisers.Nonetheless, it can still carry out high-profile attacks, which it claims on its Telegram channels - a social media messaging app. There are no signs militants exchange weapons or financing.As for its leader, the US believes the group's current honcho is Abdulqadir Mumin, who heads the Somalia branch.Recent attacksPolice in Australia said IS appeared to inspire the gunmen behind the shooting attack at a Jewish Hanukkah event in Sydney's Bondi Beach, where 15 people were killed.IS continues to plot in Syria, where the government co-operates with the US-led coalition combatting the group.This month, two US soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in Syria by a suspected IS-sympathiser.And IS has also carried out attacks in Africa, claiming an attack in Congo in October, when 43 worshippers were killed during mass at a church.UK 'recognises significant threat' terror groups presentThe UK government has not commented on the US strikes in Nigeria, which is a Commonwealth nation.But Sky News understands from a source that the Foreign Office recognises the "significant threat" terror groups present at home and abroad, including to "vulnerable communities".Metal debris found by residents after US strikeThe US is yet to give specific details around the strikes in northwestern Nigeria overnight, such as which exact IS group it targeted.In the meantime, local residents are beginning to piece together events overnight, with some finding what appear to be fragments of a missile.You can see metal debris in the image below, taken in the village of Jabo, in Sokoto - the state where the attack happened.Strikes were a 'surprise' that may bring short-term benefit, says expertUS strikes in Nigeria would likely have come as a "surprise" to the population there, according to one regional expert.That's because Nigeria has "prided itself" on its defence policy excluding foreign intervention, says Miriam Adah, an assistant research manager for Africa at conflict monitor ACLED.Speaking to our presenter Samantha Washington, Adah added the strikes may have a short-term impact."I do think that these strikes will have an effect in the sense that, since this is coming as a surprise, even terror groups would want to take a step back to readdress, or to re-strategise," she said."So, I think that for the immediate [term], in the interim, we would see a decline in terrorist activities, especially in cases like Sokoto where the airstrike happened."Could it last longer than that? Adah isn't sure."I do not see that the airstrikes will necessarily end the situation," she said.Watch: What do we know about these strikes?It's just gone midday here in the UK, with the sun only just starting to rise on the east coast of the US.We're likely to get more reaction and developments from the states as the morning there goes on.So to tie up everything we know so far, our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir has you covered in just over two minutes...Nigeria doesn't rule out more strikes - and insists this isn't about a 'particular religion'In the post just below this one, our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir outlines why Nigeria is in a tough spot over Washington's claims of Christian persecution.As data shows in our 10.45 post, Muslims fall victim to violence in the country at least just as much.We're now seeing the Nigerian government's attempt to balance its cooperation with the US without condoning its comments around Christian massacres.Nigeria's foreign minister, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, has told the BBC the strike was a "joint operation" targeting "terrorists".And he added it "has nothing to do with a particular religion".Without naming IS, Tuggar said the operation was in the works "for quite some time" and used Nigerian intel.And he did not rule out further strikes, adding that depends on "decisions to be taken by the leadership of the two countries".Analysis: Nigeria walking tightrope between US cooperation and debunked Christian persecutionBy Yousra Elbagir, Africa correspondentNigeria's government is walking a tightrope.It has publicly acknowledged security co-ordination with the US leading to "precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by airstrikes in the northwest".That's while it attempts to create distance from the debunked claims of Nigerian Christian persecution that come from the Oval Office in conjunction with these strikes, and reiterating: "Terrorist violence in any form whether directed at Christians, Muslims, or other communities remains an affront to Nigeria's values and to international peace and security."Terror attacks carried out by Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) are known to indiscriminately target Muslims and Christians across northeast and northwest Nigeria.On Christmas Eve, a bomb exploded in a packed mosque in the capital of Borno state, killing at least five people (see 8.08).But Donald Trump has consistently claimed that ISIS is persecuting Christians there and, after the US strikes, posted on social media: ⁠"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!"The Nigerian government will have to work to assure its public that security cooperation with the US does not mean they are lending credibility to these claims.The Trump administration will also have to pacify its base.This is the third documented US foreign military intervention against ISIS in the span of a week.The US military carried out strikes in Syria, Somalia and, now, Nigeria since 19 December - a pattern that could fuel frustration among Trump supporters who denounce US involvement in foreign wars.Are Christians uniquely persecuted in Nigeria? Not according to the dataDonald Trump's administration and his supporters have for a few months now been making claims around Christian massacres in Nigeria.While it is true that Christian communities have suffered in the country - where multiple armed groups operate - data suggests Muslim violence has been reported at a similar rate.This map shows incidents are fairly evenly spread across Muslim and Christian areas.And when it comes to attacks on religious sites, more have been reported at mosques over the past year than at churches.Before 2025, incidents at churches were more common.Nigeria strikes happened less than a week after operation in SyriaThese strikes on Nigeria were made less than a week after a US attack in Syria, as outlined in the post just below this one.That operation had a similar stated objective to last night's - to "eliminate ISIS fighters, infrastructure, and weapons sites".A US official described it as a "large-scale" strike that hit 70 targets in areas across central Syria.It came after three US citizens - two National Guard members and a civilian interpreter - were killed in an attack in the Syrian desert on 13 December."This is not the beginning of a war - it is a declaration of vengeance," Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, said in a social media post."The United States of America, under President Trump's leadership, will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people."Why did the US target Syria? Here's Yousra Elbagir to get you up to speed...Watch: Trump promised 'America first' - so how will his base react to more foreign intervention?It's been a busy week on the world stage for Donald Trump, and perhaps not in ways his supporters envisaged less than a year into his second term.Overnight strikes in Nigeria were launched after a similar operation in Syria, while tensions with Venezuela continue to rise.In less than 45 seconds, our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir breaks down the issue he may face domestically as a result of these strikes in Nigeria.Nigerian minister admitted 'religious issues' - but denied Trump claimsTo put these developments into some more context, let's go back to Donald Trump's remarks last month.In early November, he said the US military "could be" deployed to Nigeria to stop what he described as the mass killing of Christians.That came after he said Christianity is "facing an existential threat" in the country.Senator Ted Cruz, a high-profile Republican, took it further, claiming Nigerian officials are allowing a "Christian genocide".As we've outlined already, analysts actually say Muslims have been dying in greater numbers as the country grapples with militant groups.We spoke to Nigeria's information and national orientation minister Mohammed Idris in the days after those comments from the US.Speaking on The World with Yalda Hakim, he said the country does have "religious issues" - but people are being killed in mosques as well as churches.Watch his interview back in the video below...Analysis: Nigeria in difficult position with TrumpNigeria coordinated with the US during its strikes in the northwest overnight.As we've already outlined, the country's military is stretched in its battle against multiple armed groups (see 7.39).The result of that is a security crisis that has killed Christians as well as Muslims.But with Donald Trump's team solely highlighting Christian suffering, our Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir says the Nigerian government is in a tough spot."I think the Nigerian government is in a very difficult position," she says."It may be welcoming this coordination with the US and trying to get ahead of their terrorism problem - their ISIS problem... that they've suffered from for many years - but still not wanting to kind of confirm these claims that Christians in Nigeria are persecuted more than any other religious group."Muslim communities, she points out, have been targeted as "violently and viciously" as their Christian neighbours have been."So, I think it's a difficult time, where these strikes are obviously going to be loudly celebrated by the Trump administration, where Nigerian authorities want to increase coordination, cooperation," Elbagir adds."But, also, they don't want to confirm or give any credibility to claims of a Christian genocide that are simply not true."Possible targets of US strikes torment the villages that invited them to provide securityThe US has not said exactly which group it targeted overnight, with Donald Trump only saying they went after "ISIS terrorist scum".But security analysts have posited the likely target was members of Lakurawa.This group is prominent in the northwest, where the strikes happened.Multiple analysts say Lakurawa has been active there since around 2017, when it was invited by traditional authorities in Sokoto state to protect their communities from bandits.According to James Barnett, an Africa researcher with the Washington-based Hudson Institute, the militants "overstayed their welcome, clashing with some of the community leaders... and enforcing a harsh interpretation of sharia law that alienated much of the rural population".Malik Samuel, a Nigerian security researcher with Good Governance Africa, said communities now "openly say that Lakurawa are more oppressive and dangerous than the bandits they claim to protect them from". He added Lakurawa controls territories in Sokoto and Kebbi states, and has become known for killings, kidnapping, rape and armed robbery.Five were killed in earlier attack on MosqueWhile Washington's overnight attack on IS targets in Nigeria are, it said, a defence of Christians in the country, Muslims have suffered a security crisis as well.Just two days ago, at least five worshippers were killed and 35 others injured when a suspected suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Maiduguri, the capital of Nigeria's Borno state, in the northeast.Police said it happened during evening prayers, while no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.Islamist insurgents Boko Haram and its ISWAP faction (see 7.39 for more on them) have waged a 15-year campaign of violence targeting civilians, mosques and markets in the northeast.Witnesses at al Adum mosque described scenes of panic as victims were rushed to hospital.Last August, gunmen attacked a mosque and nearby homes in the northwestern state of Katsina, killing at least 50, according to local officials and residents.For context: Nigeria is a country of more than 200 million people, which is divided between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.An Islamist insurgency has dragged on for over 15 years and is largely confined to the northeast of the country, which is majority Muslim.While Christians have been killed, most of the victims have been Muslims, analysts say.Mapped: Where were the strikes in Nigeria?The US said its attacks targeted IS militants in the northwest, in a state called Sokoto.This is where - as we outlined at 7.39 - the IS-affiliated Lakurawa operates.

The US has carried out strikes in Nigeria's Sokoto state, claiming to have hit alleged militants linked to the so-called "Islamic State" group. Nigeria says the Christmas Day attack was a joint operation. Residents of villages hit say the area was not a militant stronghold.

President Donald Trump said the U.S. launched airstrikes in northwest Nigeria on Christmas night targeting ISIS militants and warning future attacks may follow. “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!” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. Africa Command conducted the strikes in northwest Nigeria’s Sokoto State, according to the War Department. “The command’s initial assessment is that multiple ISIS terrorists were killed in the ISIS camps,” a Pentagon spokesperson told The Intercept. Trump has spent the first year of his second term touting his efforts to end conflicts and claiming to be a “peacemaker” even as he has recently made war in Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean in 2025. “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,” wrote Trump. “The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.” Over two terms, the Trump administration has repeatedly killed noncombatants, from Somalia to Yemen. Most recently, the Trump administration has been killing civilians in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The military has carried out 29 known attacks at sea since September, killing at least 105 civilians whom it claims are narco-terrorists. The War Department did not reply to questions about the numbers of enemy forces and civilians killed in the Christmas attack in Nigeria. “Specific details about the operation will not be released in order to ensure operational security,” said the Pentagon spokesperson. In November, Trump ordered the Defense Department to prepare for a military intervention in Nigeria to protect Christians from attack by Islamic militants. War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed Thursday’s strikes in a post on social media, writing that the U.S. was “Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation.” “U.S. Africa Command is working with Nigerian and regional partners to increase counterterrorism cooperation efforts related to on-going violence and threats against innocent lives,” said Gen. Dagvin Anderson, the chief of U.S. Africa Command. We’re independent of corporate interests — and powered by members. Join us. Become a member The U.S. military has a long relationship with Nigeria and has played a role in airstrikes that have killed civilians. Between 2000 and 2022, the U.S. provided, facilitated, or approved more than $2 billion in security aid — including weapons and equipment sales — to Nigeria, according to a report by Brown University’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies and the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor, a Washington think tank. This includes the delivery of 12 Super Tucano warplanes as part of a $593 million package, approved by the State Department in 2017, that also included bombs and rockets. Over that same period, hundreds of Nigerian airstrikes killed thousands of Nigerians. A 2017 attack on a displaced persons camp in Rann, Nigeria, killed more than 160 civilians, many of them children. A subsequent Intercept investigation revealed that the attack was referred to as an instance of “U.S.-Nigerian operations” in a formerly secret U.S. military document.

Abuja, Nigeria  —  A day after part of a missile fired by the United States hit their village, landing just meters from its only medical facility, the people of Jabo in northwestern Nigeria are in a state of shock and confusion. Suleiman Kagara, a resident of this quiet and predominantly Muslim farming community in Tambuwal district of Sokoto state, told CNN he heard a loud blast and saw flames as a projectile flew overhead at around 10 p.m. on Thursday. Soon after, it came crashing down, exploding on impact with the ground and sending the villagers fleeing in fear. “We couldn’t sleep last night,” Kagara said. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.” Kagara did not realize it at the time, but what he was witnessing was part of a US strike that President Donald Trump would later refer to as a “Christmas present” for terrorists. Not long after the impact in Jabo, Trump declared on Thursday that the US had carried out a “powerful and deadly strike” against ISIS militants in the region, who he accused of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries!” According to US Africa Command, the operation neutralized multiple ISIS militants. But Trump’s explanation has left Kagara and his fellow villagers scratching their heads. While parts of Sokoto face challenges with banditry, kidnappings and attacks by armed groups including Lakurawa – which Nigeria classifies as a terrorist organization due to suspected affiliations with Islamic State – villagers say Jabo is not known for terrorist activity and that local Christians coexist peacefully with the Muslim majority. “In Jabo, we see Christians as our brothers. We don’t have religious conflicts, so we weren’t expecting this,” he said. Bashar Isah Jabo, a lawmaker representing Tambuwal in the state parliament, described the village to CNN as “a peaceful community” that has “no known history of ISIS, Lakurawa, or any other terrorist groups operating in the area.” He said the projectile had struck a field “approximately 500 meters” from a Primary Health Center in Jabo and that, while there were no casualties, the incident had “caused fear and panic within the community.” Nigeria’s Information Ministry later said that the government, in collaboration with the US, had “successfully conducted precision strike operations” targeting ISIS hideouts in the forests of Tangaza district in Sokoto. However, it also noted that “during the course of the operation, debris from expended munitions fell in Jabo,” and another area in north-central Kwara state – though it stressed there had been no civilian casualties. The operation in Nigeria follows repeated claims by Trump of a significant threat to Christians in the country, with the president ordering the Pentagon last month to prepare for possible military action. Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar told CNN Friday that he had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio prior to the strike and that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu had given the “go ahead.” However, Tuggar also said that this operation was not a religious issue but aimed at ensuring the safety of innocent civilians across the region. Analysts say religion is just one of multiple factors behind the persistent security challenges Nigeria has faced for many years. Conflicts also arise from communal and ethnic rivalries, as well as tensions between farmers and herders over scarce land and water resources. Nnamdi Obasi, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, said that while the US airstrikes might weaken some armed groups and mark a significant escalation in an offensive that Nigeria’s overstretched military has struggled with for years, “they are unlikely to halt the multi-faceted violence in different parts of the country that is driven largely by failures of governance.”

Abuja, Nigeria  —  A day after part of a missile fired by the United States hit their village, landing just meters from its only medical facility, the people of Jabo in northwestern Nigeria are in a state of shock and confusion. Suleiman Kagara, a resident of this quiet and predominantly Muslim farming community in Tambuwal district of Sokoto state, told CNN he heard a loud blast and saw flames as a projectile flew overhead at around 10 p.m. on Thursday. Soon after, it came crashing down, exploding on impact with the ground and sending the villagers fleeing in fear. “We couldn’t sleep last night,” Kagara said. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.” Kagara did not realize it at the time, but what he was witnessing was part of a US strike that President Donald Trump would later refer to as a “Christmas present” for terrorists. Not long after the impact in Jabo, Trump declared on Thursday that the US had carried out a “powerful and deadly strike” against ISIS militants in the region, who he accused of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries!” According to US Africa Command, the operation neutralized multiple ISIS militants. But Trump’s explanation has left Kagara and his fellow villagers scratching their heads. While parts of Sokoto face challenges with banditry, kidnappings and attacks by armed groups including Lakurawa – which Nigeria classifies as a terrorist organization due to suspected affiliations with Islamic State – villagers say Jabo is not known for terrorist activity and that local Christians coexist peacefully with the Muslim majority. “In Jabo, we see Christians as our brothers. We don’t have religious conflicts, so we weren’t expecting this,” he said. Bashar Isah Jabo, a lawmaker representing Tambuwal in the state parliament, described the village to CNN as “a peaceful community” that has “no known history of ISIS, Lakurawa, or any other terrorist groups operating in the area.” He said the projectile had struck a field “approximately 500 meters” from a Primary Health Center in Jabo and that, while there were no casualties, the incident had “caused fear and panic within the community.” Nigeria’s Information Ministry later said that the government, in collaboration with the US, had “successfully conducted precision strike operations” targeting ISIS hideouts in the forests of Tangaza district in Sokoto. However, it also noted that “during the course of the operation, debris from expended munitions fell in Jabo,” and another area in north-central Kwara state – though it stressed there had been no civilian casualties. The operation in Nigeria follows repeated claims by Trump of a significant threat to Christians in the country, with the president ordering the Pentagon last month to prepare for possible military action. Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar told CNN Friday that he had spoken with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio prior to the strike and that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu had given the “go ahead.” However, Tuggar also said that this operation was not a religious issue but aimed at ensuring the safety of innocent civilians across the region. Analysts say religion is just one of multiple factors behind the persistent security challenges Nigeria has faced for many years. Conflicts also arise from communal and ethnic rivalries, as well as tensions between farmers and herders over scarce land and water resources. Nnamdi Obasi, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group, said that while the US airstrikes might weaken some armed groups and mark a significant escalation in an offensive that Nigeria’s overstretched military has struggled with for years, “they are unlikely to halt the multi-faceted violence in different parts of the country that is driven largely by failures of governance.”

US-backed air strikes in Nigeria hit two camps linked to the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS) in the Bauni forest of Sokoto State, targeting foreign fighters infiltrating from the Sahel, the Nigerian government said. The strikes carried out on Thursday were approved by President Bola Tinubu and launched from maritime platforms domiciled in the Gulf of Guinea, after extensive intelligence gathering, operational planning, and reconnaissance, the information ministry said in a statement on Friday. US President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on Thursday that his country's forces had launched a strike against Islamic State group militants in northwest Nigeria at the request of Nigeria's government. He said the group had been targeting Christians in the region. "A total of 16 GPS-guided precision munitions were deployed using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms, successfully neutralising the targeted ISIS elements attempting to penetrate Nigeria from the Sahel corridor," the Nigerian government statement said. Intelligence indicated the camps were being used by foreign Islamic State group elements working with local affiliates to plan large-scale attacks inside Nigeria, it added. No civilian casualties were reported, although debris fell in two towns in Sokoto and Kwara states. Trump described the operation as “numerous perfect strikes” and warned there would be “more to come”. The operation marks a rare joint action between Abuja and Washington and underscores growing security cooperation as Islamist violence spreads south from the Sahel. Sokoto State authorities confirmed the strikes and urged residents to remain calm. “The ongoing operations are geared towards securing the state and ensuring the protection of lives and property,” the state government said. Nigeria has battled Islamist insurgents for more than a decade, but the presence of foreign fighters linked to the Islamic State group signals an escalation in the threat. The Nigerian government said it remains “fully committed to the protection of lives and property” and vowed further action against transnational extremist networks.

US Airstrikes: Jos Residents Express Divergent Views Over Attacks on Terror Groups#trusttvnews #USstrike

Jaroslav LukivandMakuochi OkaforBBCOne strike hit a field near a village in Sokoto stateThe US has launched "powerful and deadly" strikes against militants linked to the Islamic State group (IS) in north-western Nigeria, where militants have sought to establish a foothold, President Donald Trump said. Trump told Politico he ordered the 25 December strikes as "a Christmas present" - contradicting a statement by Nigerian officials.Camps run by the group in Sokoto state were hit near the border with Niger, the US military said. Casualty numbers are unclear, but both US and Nigerian officials say militants were killed.Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tuggar told the BBC it was a "joint operation" and had "nothing to do with a particular religion".Tuggar said the strikes had been planned "for quite some time" using intelligence provided by Nigeria. He did not rule out further strikes. Referring to the timing of strikes - which took place late on Thursday - he said they did not have "anything to do with Christmas".But Trump told Politico otherwise in an interview. "They were going to do it earlier," Trump said of the airstrikes. "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."The US military said an "initial assessment" suggested "multiple" fatalities in Sokoto state.A local official in the Tangaza area of Sokoto state, Isa Salihu Bashir, told the BBC the strikes had "hit some Lakurawa terrorist camps". He said many fighters had been killed but the death toll was unclear.The BBC has been unable to independently confirm casualty figures.Bashir added that border patrols on the Niger side reported seeing Lakurawa fighters fleeing the targeted areas.The Nigerian government has long been fighting an array of jihadist groups, including Boko Haram and IS-linked factions, but largely in the north-east. But in recent years a smaller group - known locally as Lakurawa - has sought to establish a base in north-western Sokoto state.Nigerian authorities say the group has links to jihadist networks in Mali and Niger. They add that its members have settled in border communities, recruited young people, and imposed harsh controls.Tangaza is made up of remote villages, whose residents are mostly moderate Muslims. In a statement late on Friday, Nigeria's information ministry said "precision strike operations" had been carried with the "explicit approval" of President Bola Tinubu and with "the full involvement of the armed forces of Nigeria".It also said that during the operation debris from munitions fell in two communities – the village of Jabo, also in Sokoto state, and Offa in Kwara state, about 600km (370 miles) to the south. No civilian casualties were reported in either location.Umar Jabo, an eyewitness in Jabo, told the BBC: "Something that looked like a plane flashed and crashed... in fields." He said there was no issue with IS in the area: "We live peacefully, and there is no conflict between us and Christians."The Trump administration has previously accused the Nigerian government of failing to protect Christians from jihadist attacks and has claimed a "genocide" is being perpetrated.Trump has labelled Nigeria a "country of particular concern", a designation used by the US state department that provides for sanctions against countries "engaged in severe violations of religious freedom".The US military was ordered to prepare to intervene in Nigeria in November.US Department of DefenseThe US defence department posted a short video that appears to show a missile being launched from a military vesselIn a social media post late on Christmas Day confirming the strikes, Trump said that he would "not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper".US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that he was "grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation". The Pentagon later posted a short video that appeared to show a missile being launched from a ship.Militants allied to IS have sought to establish a presence in two north-western states, while a separate IS-linked group has a stronghold in north-eastern BornoNigeria is Africa's most populous country, with about 220 million people, divided roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims.Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and IS-linked offshoots have wrought havoc in north-eastern Nigeria for more than a decade, killing thousands of people.Most victims have been Muslims, according to Acled, a group that analyses political violence around the world.The strikes are the second major US intervention targeting IS in recent weeks.Last week, the US said it had carried out a "massive strike" against IS in Syria.US Central Command (Centcom) said fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery had struck more than 70 targets. Aircraft from Jordan were also involved.Those strikes were launched in retaliation for the killing of three Americans - two soldiers and a civilian interpreter - in an ambush.

People have started to ask questions about the true impact of the United States' recent strikes against "Islamic State" militants in northwest Nigeria. "Nigerians are frustrated that in the last 15 years, their lives have not been taken seriously," Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, of the Abuja-based Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, told DW. "The issue now is whether this foreign intervention is going to really help deal decisively with insecurity in Nigeria... Many people are not sure." Security and policy analyst Olajumoke Ayandele told DW that while counterterrorism efforts are not solutions on their own, "international intervention can be tactically effective, especially in the short term." "Precision attacks can disrupt leadership of 'Islamic State'-affiliated groups, degrade their capabilities and even buy the military time," US-based Ayandele added.  So far, the Nigerian government has confirmed it approved the strikes, saying they followed "extensive intelligence gathering, operational planning and reconnaissance." There is no confirmation of the number of casualties from the US strikes. However, the attacks frightened residents living near where the munitions explodedImage: Tunde Omolehin/AP Photo/picture alliance "A total of 16 GPS-guided precision munitions were deployed using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms, successfully neutralizing the targeted ISIS elements attempting to penetrate Nigeria from the Sahel corridor," the government stated. Uncertainty over casualties However, even days after the strikes, authorities remain unable to confirm whether there were any civilian casualties or deaths among the targeted militants. DW correspondents monitoring the aftermath reported that while some structures were destroyed, casualty figures are still unknown. "The number of terrorist casualties is not yet known because these territories are not where people can go easily," said DW's Abuja-based reporter Ben Shemang, adding that militant silence could be strategic to maintain resilience. The Nigerian government emphasized that foreign so-called "Islamic State" elements working with local affiliates were using the targeted camps to plan large-scale attacks inside Nigeria. "The ongoing operations are geared towards securing the state and ensuring the protection of lives and property," the government said. More strikes to come?  Miriam Adah, researcher at the independent Armed Conflict Location and Event Data monitor, said the Nigerian government's confirmation that it had knowledge of the strikes "shows that there has been intelligence sharing between the two countries." Nigeria confirms cooperation with US strikes on IS targetsTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that Video Player is loading.Current Time 0:00Duration 0:00Remaining Time 0:00 "This is probably going to open pathways for the US to sell weapons to Nigeria which will aid Nigeria's fight against terrorism and insecurity across different regions," she told DW. Analyst Ayandele said the strikes are a precedent for further United States involvement. "This has not been described as a one-off intervention or campaign. I think it's going to depend on how Washington assesses the evolving threat environment and whether Nigeria requests continued support from the US. "Nigeria wants flexibility, especially when it comes to high-end capabilities when necessary," Ayandele added. "But they also want to maintain their operational control." Nigeria's security forces underresourced during crisisTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that Video Player is loading.Current Time 0:00Duration 0:00Remaining Time 0:00 Nigeria has fought Islamist insurgents for more than a decade, but the appearance of foreign fighters linked to IS signals an escalation. The US strikes around Christmas hold symbolism following President Donald Trump's October warning that Christianity faces an "existential threat" in Nigeria. Trump previously threatened military intervention over violence allegedly targeting Christian communities. But many analysts argue the terror threat affects all Nigerians, regardless of religion. One strike unlikely to end insecurity Conflict researcher Adah cautioned against overestimating the impact of the airstrikes. "So far there's no casualties, there's no fatalities. We don't have the full picture yet." Trump described the US military action as a "powerful and deadly strike." But Adah told DW: "We cannot say that one airstrike or a few airstrikes will quell insecurity in the region, or will protect Nigerians from activities of terrorists or bandit groups across the country." For Ayandele, long-term security depends on "local governance, state presence, economic opportunities, and rebuilding trust between civilians and security forces." She added: "Without this, military gains might be in vain. External partners like the US can support, but ultimately stability has to be built within Nigeria." Boko Haram militants terrorize farmers in NigeriaTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that Video Player is loading.Current Time 0:00Duration 0:00Remaining Time 0:00 Edited by: Cai Nebe

The Defence Headquarters says a battle damage assessment of the recent United States strikes conducted in conjunction with Nigerian forces is still ongoing. United States President, Donald Trump, announced on Christmas Day that the American military conducted lethal strikes against Islamic State targets in north-western Nigeria. The Federal Government confirmed the joint effort, describing it as part of ongoing counterterrorism cooperation. There has, however, been debate in the country on whether the strike was successful or not.Inside Kwara Community Where 60 Maidens Wed In One Day Speaking while fielding questions from journalists on Wednesday in Abuja, the Director, Defence Media Operations, Maj. Gen. Michael Onoja, said the military would make its findings public after the assessment was completed. “On the United States strikes in conjunction with Nigerian forces, there is a process of battle damage assessment. We are still in that process, and I can assure you that once that is completed, we will communicate to the public all our observations. In due course, we will give you all the information that you require from the U.S.–Nigeria strikes,” Onoja said. Responding to questions on whether terrorists were present at the bombed locations, Onoja said intelligence reports confirmed their presence in the area before the strikes. “You know, terrorists are ubiquitous, and we cannot confine them to one location. Of course, there is evidence to show that they are in the Sahel. So we can also take it further given the proximity of the Sahel to Sokoto. Intelligence reports have also confirmed their presence there before those strikes were conducted against them. So, yes, they were there, because those strikes were based on intelligence reports. They have confirmed their presence in those areas. The fact that it was not publicised is sometimes for operational security reasons,” he said. He also said the military was monitoring the movement of terrorists outside the targeted locations and coordinating with field commanders to prevent their infiltration into communities. According to him, the armed forces are also engaging civilians to support security agencies with timely information. “We are monitoring them, and we are doing the necessary things, communicating with all the force commanders in the areas that we have identified as threat areas, so that they will prevent them from assimilating into the community and causing further havoc. And as time goes on, you will hear about all the activities that we are doing. You know, it’s important that while we are acting, we keep it confidential. With time, I will call you here and brief you about all the things that we are doing. “Also, we are mobilising the civilian population so that they will be vigilant and give information to the military and other security agencies, so that any issue of insecurity or any movement of these terrorists can be acted on quickly. “The truth is that security or insecurity can only be addressed through the cooperation of every member of society. It’s called the whole-of-society approach,” he said. Onoja also appealed to persons who may have taken possession of ammunition or fragments from the operation to return them to security agencies for safe recovery. “We don’t expect anybody to take away those materials… they should return them to the military or security divisions so that we can disarm those things before they cause greater damage,” he said. Related News Fence collapse kills five children in Borno Troops arrest criminal kingpin associate in Taraba, recover ammunition $9.7m terror-financing case: Court denies Bauchi commissioner, others bail Commenting on criticisms of the joint strikes, the defence spokesman said it was not the role of the Armed Forces to respond to every public statement and that relevant agencies were responsible for addressing such concerns. “Every agency has its functions. It is not for the Armed Forces to focus on what some people in society do not agree with in our activities. Ours is to focus on our kinetic operations and, as much as possible, conduct non-kinetic operations when necessary. I believe that there are relevant agencies who are tasked to consider such statements if they are against or for the country. And I believe that they are doing so,” he said. On recent incidents of suicide bombing, Onoja said the arrest of a suspected attacker this week was significant in disrupting planned activities and logistics of terrorist elements. He said security agencies were working to prevent future attacks using intelligence networks and other measures. He assured the public that the armed forces would continue operations against terrorist groups into the new year. Meanwhile,the Borno State Police Command, on Wednesday, dismissed as “misinformation” claims by the Nigerian Army that it arrested a suspected suicide bomber in Borno State, insisting that the operation was carried out by the police and that no active Improvised Explosive Device was recovered. The Police Public Relations Officer of the Borno State Police Command, ASP Nahum Daso, told The PUNCH on Wednesday that the suspect was arrested by the police and is currently in police custody. “The same suspect shown in the pictures released by the Army is with us. I personally interviewed him last night. The items recovered from him are not IEDs,” Daso said. “It was a police operation,” he added. In a statement released in the early hours of Wednesday, the police spokesman warned members of the public against the spread of misinformation. “The Borno State Police Command has observed with concern the circulation of social media videos alleging the recovery of Improvised Explosive Device components in Banki, Bama Local Government Area of Borno State,” the statement read. “To set the record straight, on 29 December 2025, at about 1810hrs, operatives of the Command, while on surveillance around a mosque in Banki LGA, accosted one Abubakar in possession of a bag containing electrical wires, old mobile phone batteries, assorted gadget scrap materials, and pairs of shoes.” Daso stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the items recovered had “no active IED fabrication or priming.” He added that the case had been transferred to the State Command Headquarters for comprehensive investigation, noting that the suspect remained in custody while inquiries continued to ascertain the intent behind the items found in his possession. “The command cautions members of the public against spreading unverified information capable of causing fear or panic and urges reliance on credible and official sources for accurate information,” he said. “Further updates will be provided as investigations progress.”

US President Donald Trump launched a "powerful and deadly strike" against the Islamic State in Nigeria, but it also hit the Offa area of Kwara State. Tajudeen Alabi, who is a former Special Assistant to the Kwara State governor on security matters, confirmed the incident to the BBC. Alabi said they heard sounds three times around 9 PM on December 25. The former Special Assistant said the strike hit and destroyed buildings in several locations, but as of now, they have not reported any casualties, although some people sustained injuries. "At least, about five structures were destroyed in different locations. We saw some items in a popular hotel, we call it Offa Central Hotel. It looks like a bomb." Around 1:30am, the US President released a statement saying they sent airstrikes to the northeast. To us, we believe that the drone missed the target and landed in Offa. Before it landed, I am sure it had already weakened; if not, we would have recorded some casualties. We thank God that it was the structures that were affected. "And this morning, people are there to sympathize. They found the damaged drones, some of the parts, you can see them in the building that collapsed. That is what happened in Offa since last night," Alabi said. The Nigeria Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also confirmed the strikes, stating that they are collaborating with America to carry them out. In a statement on their X account, the ministry said Nigeria is cooperating with international partners including America to address the threats of violent terrorism. They say the collaboration led to "precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria and by air strikes in the northwest." "A total of 16 GPS-guided precision munitions were deployed using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms, successfully neutralizing the targeted ISIS elements that were attempting to penetrate Nigeria from the Sahel corridor. During the course of the operation, remains from expended munitions fell in Jabo, Tambuwal Local Government Area of Sokoto State, and in Offa, Kwara State, near the premises of a hotel. No civilian casualties were recorded in either location, and relevant authorities promptly secured the affected areas. Many people have been commenting on the matter, including opposition parties. The main opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party, said in a statement they released on Friday that they are concerned about the way the information reached Nigerians. They say, "the Federal government should be the first to report the news to sensitize Nigerians instead of waiting to confirm stories that are already out, unless they hear the information like other people." Former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore said in a statement that this airstrike makes "the country to be reduced to a bystander as their sovereignty is being violated under the direction of US President Donald Trump. He added that it is not Washington's job to protect Nigeria but better leadership. Meanwhile, Islamic cleric Ahmad Gumi suggested that this strike in Sokoto has turned Nigeria into a theater of war and said that if Nigeria was looking for military assistance, they should have used China, Turkey, or Pakistan. Oga Gumi gave reasons, saying that U.S. involvement in Nigeria would attract serious anti-U.S. forces and turn the country into a battlefield. He therefore called on the government to stop the military collaboration it has with the U.S. and instead seek help from the countries they have already spoken to.

26 December 2025Read am in 4 minsUS President Donald Trump bin launch "powerful and deadly strike" against di Islamic State for Nigeria but e also hit Offa area of Kwara State.Tajudeen Alabi, wey be former Special Assistant to Kwara State govnor on security matas confam di incident to di BBC.Alabi say dem hear sound three times around 9pm on 25 December.Di former Special Assistant say di strike hit and destroy buildings for several locations but as of now dem neva report any casualty but some pipo sustain injuries."At least, na about five structures destroy for different locations. We see some items for one popular hotel, we dey call am Offa Central Hotel. E be like bomb.""Around 1:30am, US President release statement say dem send airstrikes to northeast. To us, we believe say di drone miss di target and land for Offa. Bifor e land, I sure say e don weak, if not, we for don record some casualties. We tank God say na di structures dey affected."And dis morning, pipo dey dia to sympathise. Dem feem di damaged drones, some of di parts, you see am for di building wey collapse. Dat na wetin happun for Offa since yesterday night," Alabi tok.Nigeria confam airstrikes on terrorist targetsNigeria Ministry of Foreign Affairs wey also confam di strikes say dem collaborate wit America to carry am out.For statement ontop dia X account, di ministry say Nigeria dey cooperate wit international partners including America to address di threat of terrorism and violent extremism.Dem say di collabo lead to "precision hits on terrorist targets for Nigeria and by air strikes for di northwest.""A total of 16 GPS-guided precision munitions nai we deploy using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms, e successfully neutralise di targeted ISIS elements wey dey attempt to penetrate Nigeria from di Sahel corridor.During di course of di operation, remains from expended munitions fall for Jabo, Tambuwal Local Government Area of Sokoto State, and for Offa, Kwara State, near di premises of a hotel. No civilian casualties were recorded in either location, and relevant authorities promptly secure di affected areas."Nigerians react to airstrikes Many pipo don dey comment on di mata including opposition parties.Di main opposition, di Peoples Democratic Party tok for inside statement wey dem drop on Friday say, dem dey concerned ova di way di information reach Nigerians .Dem tok say, "di Federal govment suppose be di first to report di news to fit sensitise Nigerians instead to wait to confam tori wey don already dey outside, unless dem hear di informate like oda pipo".Former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore tok for statement say dis airstrike make "di kontri to dey reduced to bystander as dia sovereignty dey violated under di direction of US President Donald Trump".E add say no be di work of Washington to protect Nigeria but beta leadership.Meanwhile, Islamic cleric, Ahmad Gumi suggest say dis strike for Sokoto don turn Nigeria to theatre of war and tok say if na military assistance Nigeria bin dey find, dem for use China, Turkey or Pakistan.Oga Gumi give im reason say, "Di US involvement for Nigeria go attract real anti-US forces and turn our land to theatre of war".Dis na as e call on di govment to stop di military collabo wey dem get wit US and "find help wit di kontris wey we don tok".

On Christmas Day, a U.S.-Nigeria joint airstrike in Sokoto State rocked quiet communities far beyond its intended targets. Officials in both countries were quick to declare the operation a success against terrorist elements, but on the ground in Nigeria, the fallout tells a more complicated story. Indeed, some community members in some of the airstrike zones welcomed the development as relief from terrorist activity, confirming that it had hit terrorist hideouts and that they had seen them fleeing for safety. Beyond this success, there is an almost silent focus on the collateral damage, from people wounded and a destroyed building in Offa, Kwara State, to scorched farmland in Jabo, Sokoto, and possibly even tragic unintended casualties. The strike’s aftermath has left civilians shaken and searching for accountability. This gap between triumphal official narratives and local consequences raises pressing questions: Who will bear responsibility for the collateral damage? What obligations does Nigeria owe its citizens after inviting foreign military action? And why were there no troops on hand to capture the terrorists who reportedly escaped? The need for transparency, compassion, and accountability has never been clearer. Advertise with usCollateral Damage on Home Soil In Jabo, a rural village in Tambuwal Local Government, residents who had never experienced violent conflict suddenly awoke to the ground shaking and the sky glowing red. The strikes hit on the outskirts of Jabo, and while no villagers were killed, local farmland was incinerated by falling munition debris. Hundreds of kilometres away in Offa, Kwara State, an object from the strike – initially feared to be a bomb or crashing plane – slammed into a building and tore through three others, injuring five people, including a mother and child. Nigerian officials later acknowledged that remnants of the operation had landed in parts of Sokoto and Kwara, but they insisted that no civilian casualties had occurred. That claim rings hollow in Offa, where eyewitnesses recount a harrowing Christmas night explosion that pierced a woman’s body with shrapnel and left a young boy maimed. For the families whose homes and livelihoods were wrecked, the question is painfully simple: Who will repair the damage and compensate the victims? The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), an NGO, has already condemned the destruction of the Jabo farmland and private buildings in Offa. The group is demanding immediate compensation for the owners of these properties, stressing that even if strikes against terrorists are justified, such attacks must cause no civilian casualties. So far, however, there has been no public commitment by either the U.S. or Nigerian government to assist those harmed. The building in Offa remains in ruins, and the affected family is left to pick up the pieces of their lives. This lack of redress raises an uncomfortable issue: in the eagerness to celebrate a counterterrorism win, have the operation’s planners written off the collateral damage as the cost of doing business? Or will someone step up to help these innocent bystanders of the war on terror? Responsibility in a Joint Operation This operation was jointly conducted by the U.S. and Nigeria, which means shared responsibility. Nigeria’s government not only consented to the strike but even provided intelligence and post-strike security cordons. That makes it harder to pin blame solely on the foreign partner. What obligations, then, does Nigeria have after collaborating with a foreign military on its own soil? At minimum, Nigerians expect their government to protect citizens’ lives and property – or to make amends when it fails to do so. If a U.S. missile obliterates a home or field, the Nigerian state owes those citizens answers and restitution. Legally, the situation is murky: international law offers no straightforward mechanism for civilians to claim reparations from a foreign military in such cases, especially when their own government authorised the strike. Morally, however, the Nigerian authorities should advocate for their people. They could press the U.S. to assist victims or provide aid directly, rather than leaving a community to wonder why a war on terror literally crashed through their roof. This accountability gap also sets a troubling precedent: if foreign counterterrorism operations can occur in Nigeria without clear provisions to address civilian harm, what message does that send to those living in potential future strike zones? Terrorists Fleeing and a Missed Opportunity Another glaring question is why Nigerian forces were not on the ground to capitalise on the strike. According to community members in Tangaza in Sokoto, the airstrikes did hit their intended camps, reportedly killing fighters and forcing others to flee. Yet no Nigerian military units moved in during the bombardment to encircle the area and capture the escaping militants. Days after the strike, security forces in faraway Ondo State apprehended 39 suspects who fled Sokoto and hid in a forest, the men allegedly admitting they relocated south due to the strike on them in the northern part of the country. That dozens of alleged terrorists could travel halfway across Nigeria to regroup is a stark illustration of a missed opportunity. If Nigeria’s military had been poised to pursue the Lakurawa fighters on the ground at the moment they were bombed, many could have been captured or neutralised before slipping out. Why wasn’t a block and sweep operation part of the plan? The absence of Nigerian troops in real time – and the reliance on a local vigilante force (Amotekun) days later in another state to intercept fleeing suspects – hints at coordination breakdowns or capacity shortfalls that undermine the strike’s tactical value. This raises a strategic concern: What was the true objective of the operation? If it were to eliminate a terrorist threat, letting some of the fighters escape blunts the impact. If it was a symbolic show of force to send a message, as some have suggested, then it may have succeeded only in dispersing the threat across a wider area. Either way, Nigeria’s security establishment owes the public an explanation. With advanced notice of a precision strike, why were local ground forces not mobilised to prevent the terrorists’ flight? Was there a fear of ambush or a lack of troops? Or did the planners assume (wrongly, it appears) that the missiles alone would do the job? These questions cut to the heart of Nigeria’s responsibility in jointly conducted operations: collaboration with a foreign power should bolster, not replace, domestic capacity to secure and hold territory. Where Do We Go from Here? As the dust settles, Nigeria and the U.S. face a critical test; providing closure to affected communities must become a priority. This means coming clean about what happened – was anyone (terrorist or captive) found dead at the scene? What went wrong in Offa? The community deserves to know. It also means extending a hand to help: rebuilding the destroyed building in Offa and restoring the ruined farmland in Jabo would be tangible gestures of goodwill. Compensation for the injured family’s medical bills, support for the farmer who lost his crop, trauma counselling for villagers rattled by the explosions – these are the kinds of reparative actions that can help provide some closure and restore faith that citizens’ welfare matters in counterterrorism operations. Beyond material reparations, policy changes and transparency are needed to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Nigeria should establish clear protocols for foreign military assistance that include civilian protection measures and post-strike investigations. If another joint strike is contemplated, plans for immediate ground follow-up and local community liaison should be baked in. Additionally, independent observers or Nigeria’s own human rights bodies could be allowed to verify strike outcomes so that the public isn’t left guessing whom to believe. Open communication – perhaps a joint briefing by Nigerian and U.S. officials addressing the known facts and uncertainties – would help dispel rumours. Dengiyefa Angalapu, Research Analyst, Centre for Democracy and Development greatdengis@gmail.com

Residents inspect the damage after U.S. forces had launched a strike against Islamic State militants in Nigeria at the request of Nigeria's government, as U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on December 25, in Offa, Kwara State, Nigeria, December 26, 2025. REUTERS/Abdullahi Dare Akogun/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tabABUJA, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Nigeria's military urged civilians in the country's northwest on Friday not to keep or tamper with unexploded ordnance found at sites targeted in recent U.S.-backed airstrikes.The alert follows online footage showing locals scavenging debris and unexploded ordnance at strike sites in Sokoto state, sparking fears of deadly blasts.The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here.U.S. forces launched a rare strike deep inside Nigeria on December 25 at the request of Nigeria's government, firing 16 GPS-guided munitions from MQ‑9 Reaper drones at two Islamic State-linked camps in Sokoto.Report Ad"We do not expect civilians to pick up or keep such materials," Major General Michael Onoja, director of Defence Media Operations, told reporters on Friday. "We can only appeal to them to return all materials that may prove harmful to them."Onoja said specialized ordnance units within the armed forces were tasked with recovering debris and other remnants from the strikes.Reporting by Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Writing by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo; Editing by Alex RichardsonOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

A Nigerian hotel owner said Monday three of his staff were hospitalised after munitions debris fell on his hotel following the US strikes targeting militants in the country's northwest.The surprise US raid on Christmas Day hit militants linked to the Islamic State group, according to Abuja and Washington, which said there were multiple casualties among those targeted in Sokoto state.The Nigerian government had acknowledged that debris from the munitions fell across the country -- including "in Offa, Kwara state, near the premises of a hotel" -- and said there were no civilian casualties.But the owner of the Solid Worth hotel in Offa, around 800 kilometres (500 miles) from the strike targets in Sokoto's Tangaza district, told AFP three workers were hospitalised after the hotel was hit by what looked like a missile."Suddenly on Christmas Day, around late evening past 10 (pm), a bomb missile allegedly shot by the US military -- maybe it misrode and hit my hotel," said Taofeek Azeez Bello."It landed inside the hotel building, caused a little bit damage, injured three staff," he said by phone.One suffered what he said was a "traumatic" injury, and "we had to rush her to a psychiatric hospital"."One got a very bad injury on the head, a third person got injured on the lap and legs -- they are in the hospital."Daniel Bwala, a spokesman for President Bola Tinubu, on Monday reiterated to AFP that "there were no casualties except the terrorist(s)."- Debris collected by security forces -The debris hit an unoccupied room of the 22-room, two-star hotel before landing outside, Bello said. Pictures he shared with AFP appeared to show a missile head being examined and collected by security forces.Only two rooms were occupied at the time. No guests were injured.Police in Kwara state told AFP that "as of this moment, there are no details yet. Investigations are ongoing."Nigeria is battling multiple jihadist organisations, including some linked to the Islamic State movement. Neighbouring countries are also fighting IS-linked groups, and there are worries those conflicts are spilling over into Nigeria.Information Minister Mohammed Idris had said the strikes "targeted ISIS elements attempting to penetrate Nigeria from the Sahel corridor"."During the course of the operation, debris from expended munitions fell in Jabo," a town in Sokoto state, as well as Offa."No civilian casualties were recorded in either location," he said. On Saturday presidential spokesman Bwala told AFP the strikes targeted Islamic State militants who were in the country to work with the Lakurawa jihadist group and "bandit" gangs.It was not immediately known who was killed, and from which group, Bwala said.sn/ ..................... Every Exponent article goes through checks for accuracy before publication. If you have a concern or questions about this article, please email editor@purdueexponent.org.

The Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria have commended the United States government and President Donald Trump for bombing a camp of Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) terrorists in Sokoto State, North-West Nigeria on Christmas Day. The ballistic strikes came barely a month after Mr Trump designated Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern and threatened military invasion to eliminate “Islamic terrorists killing Christians in Nigeria.”Mr Trump on Thursday announced that the U.S. military carried out a series of air strikes against terrorist targets in the northern part of Nigeria, marking America’s first ever kinetic action in the West African country.In separate interviews with Peoples Gazette on Friday, the Anglican Communion and the PFN sought a continuation of such attacks on terrorists across Nigeria.“The Church of Nigeria through the primate has always made the stance of the church known on the insecurity of this country. Where help is needed, the country should ask for help,” Korede Akin, communications officer, Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion told The Gazette.He further cited a recent speech given by the primate of the Anglican Communion, Most Reverend Henry Ndukuba, where he urged the Nigerian government to collaborate with the international community in the fight against insurgents.“But on this bombing of ISWAP by the U.S., it is a good thing in my personal opinion, and more of it, if targeted at the real criminals, is good news to Nigerians to see those terrorising them killed,” Mr Akin added.Archbishop Emmah Isong, the PFN’s national vice president from the South-South region, who welcomed the development further noted that the intervention by the U.S. government is commendable as Nigerians have suffered great losses from terrorists for decades. “Nigeria has suffered in the hands of several terrorist groups for decades, our military, police and other security agencies have complained about being under trained under equiped, under mobilized, our military is overwhelmed, Nigerian Muslims and Christians have complained to the world for help, God raised the US through Trump to help Nigeria decimate these people,” Mr Isong said, adding that “the U.S. government should step up beyond bombing terrorists, but also go after individuals funding and sponsoring terrorism in Nigeria.”The spokespersons for the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Catholic Church could not be reached for comments over the development. However, Abimbola Ayuba, CAN’s director for national issues, declined comments on Friday when contacted by our correspondent. “No comments please,” Mr Ayuba simply said on WhatsApp.Meanwhile, Ishaq Akintola, the executive director, Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), in a statement issued on Friday, 26 December, 2025, said “although terrorists deserve nothing but annihilation and attacks on them are justifiable, such attacks must cause no civilian casualties.”He claimed that some of the air strikes launched by the United States of America “against alleged terrorists’ bases in North Western Nigeria and Offa in Kwara State” on Christmas Day, “fell on a farmland in Sokoto, and destroyed several buildings.”The statement read in part, “While MURIC welcomes airstrikes against terrorists, it frowns upon civilian collateral damages. We gathered that the strike on Jabo area in Tambuwal Local Government actually fell on a farmland. But the strike on Offa, Kwara State, destroyed several buildings.“MURIC condemns the alleged destruction of the farmland in Jabo area of Sokoto and some private buildings in the strike on Offa, Kwara State. This destruction will cause additional hardship on residents of the area. We therefore demand immediate compensation for the owners of the properties.‎”Our emphasis is on the safety of civilians. We recall our position which was made on Sunday, 2November, 2025 when the US first threatened to attack Nigeria. We said, ‘US strikes will make sense if they are directed at terrorist groups like Boko Haram, ISIS and ISWAP’,” the statement by MURIC noted.Though the Nigerian-U.S. collaboration is being coordinated by Nigeria’s National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu on the Nigerian side, the NSA, however, did not respond to an inquiry over the development by The Gazette on Friday.Presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga did not also take his calls, and didn’t respond to text and WhatsApp messages from our correspondent on Friday. We have recently deactivated our website's comment provider in favour of other channels of distribution and commentary. We encourage you to join the conversation on our stories via our Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages.

PRESS RELEASE FG: SUCCESSFUL PRECISION STRIKES ON FOREIGN ISIS ELEMENTS APPROVED BY PRESIDENT BOLA AHMED TINUBU The Federal Government of Nigeria, in close coordination with the Government of the United States of America, has successfully conducted precision strike operations against two major Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist enclaves located within the Bauni forest axis of Tangaza Local Government Area, Sokoto State. Intelligence confirmed that these locations were being used as assembly and staging grounds by foreign ISIS elements infiltrating Nigeria from the Sahel region, in collaboration with local affiliates, to plan and execute large-scale terrorist attacks within Nigerian territory. The precision strike operations were executed between 00:12 hours and 01:30 hours on Friday, 26 December, 2025, following explicit approval by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR. The operation was carried out under established command and control structures, with the full involvement of the Armed Forces of Nigeria and under the supervision of the Honourable Ministers of Defence and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Chief of Defence Staff. The strikes were launched from maritime platforms domiciled in the Gulf of Guinea, after extensive intelligence gathering, operational planning, and reconnaissance. A total of 16 GPS-guided precision munitions were deployed using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms, successfully neutralising the targeted ISIS elements attempting to penetrate Nigeria from the Sahel corridor. During the course of the operation, debris from expended munitions fell in Jabo, Tambuwal Local Government Area of Sokoto State, and in Offa, Kwara State, near the premises of a hotel. No civilian casualties were recorded in either location, and relevant authorities promptly secured the affected areas. The Federal Government of Nigeria reiterates its unwavering resolve to confront, degrade, and eliminate terrorist threats, particularly those posed by transnational extremist networks seeking to undermine Nigeria’s sovereignty and security. Nigeria remains fully aligned with its strategic partners and Friends of Nigeria in executing coordinated actions aimed at ensuring lasting peace, border security, and regional stability. The Federal Government assures all Nigerians that it remains firmly in control of the national security architecture and is fully committed to the protection of lives and property. Citizens are urged to remain calm and vigilant as decisive actions continue against all terrorist groups threatening the nation. Mohammed Idris, fnipr Honourable Minister of Information and National Orientation. Friday, December 26, 2025

US airstrikes in Kwara State: What we know about US airstrike that hit Kwara State - BBC News PidginTajudeen Alabi, former Special Assistant to Kwara State governor on security matters confirmed the incident to the BBC.

US airstrikes in Kwara State: Wetin we know about US airstrike wey hit Kwara State - BBC News PidginTajudeen Alabi, wey be former Special Assistant to Kwara State govnor on security matas confam di incident to di BBC.

At least three Tomahawk cruise missiles from a “powerful and deadly strike” by the United States against ISIS in Nigeria fell short of their targets: in the morning after the attack, local residents found missile debris and unexploded warheads.The photo of the wreckage was published by conflict researcher Trevor Ball of the investigative journalism group Bellingcat.US President Donald Trump has ordered a “powerful and deadly strike” against Islamic State positions in Nigeria, but the strike also hit the Offa district of Kwara State.Tajudeen Alabi, a former special assistant to the governor of Kwara State for security, confirmed the incident to the BBC.According to him, locals heard the sound of an explosion three times at around 21:00 local time on December 25. He said that the missiles hit and destroyed buildings in several places, but that no fatalities have been reported so far, although some people were injured. One of the buildings destroyed by a Tomahawk missile. Photo credits: BBC“At least about five buildings were destroyed in different places. We saw some objects in one popular hotel, which we call Offa Central Hotel. It looked like a bomb,” said Tajudeen Alabi.The Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also confirmed the strikes and said they were carried out in cooperation with the United States.According to the ministry, this cooperation led to “targeted strikes on terrorist targets in Nigeria and airstrikes in the northwest.”The published photos show the WDU-36/B high-explosive warheads weighing 310 kilograms, as well as the remains of the wing of one of the missiles. Presumably, when a deviation from the course was detected, the safety mechanism blocked the fuze, which led to the malfunction of the warheads. Back in November, Trump threatened to cut off aid and intervene to Nigeria to “completely destroy Islamic terrorists” if the government “does not protect Christians” and instructed the Department of War to prepare for “possible actions.”In response to Trump’s threat, Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said that his country is not a religiously intolerant state.For more than 20 years, Nigeria has been in a confrontation with the jihadist group Boko Haram. According to the United Nations, since 2009 alone, more than 40,000 people have been killed by jihadists and more than two million Nigerians have become forced refugees.

US airstrikes in Kwara State: What we know about US airstrike that hit Kwara State - BBC News PidginTajudeen Alabi, former Special Assistant to Kwara State governor on security matters confirmed the incident to the BBC.

US airstrikes in Kwara State: Wetin we know about US airstrike wey hit Kwara State - BBC News PidginTajudeen Alabi, wey be former Special Assistant to Kwara State govnor on security matas confam di incident to di BBC.

Another unexploded ordnance found in a farm in oro area kwara state... It is 25km from offa... If any one comes across any suspicious object in the general area, local security should be contacted... Stay safe

US airstrikes.... The unexploded munition found in jabo village sokoto is identical to the ones found in offa kwara state.....

Two weeks after the US carried out Christmas Day airstrikes in north-west Nigeria on what it described as Islamic State fighters, questions remain over the specific group that was targeted and the operation’s impact.In the aftermath of the strikes, Donald Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform that “ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians” were hit with “numerous perfect strikes”.The operation, coordinated with Nigeria, targeted an Islamist group known as Lakurawa, which extorts the mainly Muslim local population and enforces a strict version of sharia law that includes lashes for listening to music.Very little information has been shared by either the US or Nigeria about the strikes’ impact and it is unclear how many Lakurawa fighters, if any, died. The US Africa Command branch of the US military said on 25 December that its “initial assessment is that multiple Isis terrorists were killed in the Isis camps”.Malik Samuel, a researcher with Good Governance Africa, said he had spoken to a Lakurawa member who said about 100 fighters were killed in a forest camp in the Tangaza area of Sokoto state. He said he was told that about 200 were missing, with many of the remaining fighters now trying to cross into Niger. This could not be independently confirmed.The effects of an airstrike in Offa, Nigeria. It is not known how many fighters were killed despite Donald Trump hailing ‘numerous perfect strikes’. Photograph: Abiodun Jamiu/AFP/Getty ImagesResidents of Nukuru, a village about 6 miles from the reported camp, told the BBC that fighters on about 15 motorcycles had fled through the community, riding three to a bike.Missile debris fell on empty farmland about 60 miles south in the town of Jabo, which local people said had never been attacked by Lakurawa. Debris also reportedly damaged a hotel 500 miles south of Tangaza, injuring three workers.It remains unclear why the US specifically targeted Lakurawa, which operates in a rural, underdeveloped and almost entirely Muslim area in the north-west near the Niger border. Most violence in the area is perpetrated by armed gangs known as bandits.Trump had previously accused the Nigerian government of failing to stop the killing of Christians, an important theme for his evangelical base. Two US officials told the New York Times that the airstrikes were a one-off aimed at allowing Trump to claim he was going after a group that had killed Christians.A screengrab of an X post by the US Department of Defense showing a missile launch. Photograph: US Department of Defense/AFP/Getty ImagesMurtala Abdullahi, a Nigerian security consultant, also said Lakurawa was probably a symbolic target. “How do you establish a link that [a] bandit group has been hitting the Christian community?” he asked. “That’s difficult. But if you hit a jihadist group then you don’t need to establish a link.”Abdullahi said he did not know why the US had chosen to hit Lakurawa rather than Boko Haram, which is far more notorious internationally and attacks both Christians and Muslims.Since the airstrikes, global attention around Trump’s unpredictable, militarised foreign policy has turned to Venezuela, where US forces abducted Nicolás Maduro on 3 January, and Greenland, where Trump and other senior US officials have expressed renewed interest in a US takeover.Very little is known conclusively about Lakurawa, from the year it started to the number of fighters. Even the meaning of its name, which some analysts say is a Hausa pronunciation of “les recrues” (“the recruits” in French), is not an agreed fact.Nigeria designated the group as a terrorist organisation in January 2025. Some analysts say the group is linked to Islamic State’s Sahel branch. However, Samuel said he had interviewed Lakurawa members who professed loyalty to al-Qaida.Researchers agree that the group’s senior members are from Mali or Nigeria. Local people in Sokoto state report that fighters speak Hausa with a foreign accent and a different language among themselves.In about 2017, Lakurawa was invited by some local communities to protect them against bandits. However, the group has since turned to violent methods similar to those of the bandits, as well as enforcing their extreme version of Islam.“That coercive authority that they started asserting turned communities against them,” said Kato Van Broeckhoven, a United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research researcher.The effects of an airstrike in Jabo, Nigeria. Local people said the area had never been attacked by Lakurawa. Photograph: ReutersEven before the US intervention, military action alone had failed to quell Nigeria’s numerous, proliferating security crises. Just last week, gunmen killed more than 30 people in Niger state, in the centre-west of Nigeria, and abducted an unknown number of people. Local people told reporters they included students from a Catholic school where 300 pupils and teachers were kidnapped in November and only freed in December.“Why is Nigeria a fertile ground for all these groups to come in and operate?” Samuel said. “It is simple: because of governance issues … You see clearly the level of poverty in these places, you see clearly the absence of the state, the vacuum that has been created.”

A fourth unexploded Tomahawk warhead has been found in Nigeria, after the US fired at least 12 on December 25 at ISIS targets.

In the evening, moments before the United States’ aerial operation in northwestern Nigeria, a helicopter hovered above the perimeters of Gwangwano District, in Sokoto’s Tangaza Local Government Area (LGA). It was Dec. 25, 2025. Residents said helicopters had hovered around in the past, but this one stayed far too long, unsettling the civilians and alerting the terrorists.  For at least two years, communities in Tangaza have cohabited with foreign-linked Lakurawa terrorists, who first appeared like their saviours. Villagers agreed to a peace deal with the group in exchange for protection from homegrown terrorists who were ravaging their homes and taxing them to death. Initially, Lakurawa seemed more persuasive, residents said, but they eventually introduced their own radical ideologies—far worse than the criminal enterprise they had condemned. A few hours after the helicopter was sighted, Ardo Kyaure, a terrorist leader in Tangaza, was seen moving house to house near Bauni forests, urging residents to flee. He warned them of an impending attack. Villagers who saw Ardo said he was also making phone calls to accomplices, panting as he ran through the communities.  Ardo was once a local terrorist leader before defecting to join Lakurawa. He became a middleman between the foreign terrorists and the villagers after he was subdued, losing so many of his fighters to the new sect. News quickly reached the communities that the Lakurawa terrorists were evacuating their camps. Residents said the terrorists fled the area on over a dozen motorcycles. The villagers within the Bauni Mountains and the Kandam community also ran for their lives. “We sighted 15 motorcycles carrying luggage and the Lakurawa terrorists with their women and children,” Alhaji Rabiu, a resident of Zurmuku, a village neighbouring the Bauni forest, told HumAngle. “Ten additional motorcycles were moving to Muntsaika, a community in the nearby Niger Republic, in the evening before the strikes happened.” A neighbourhood in Sokoto’s Tangaza LGA. Photo: Abdullahi Abubakar/HumAngle. HumAngle spoke to scores of locals who witnessed the air raid, especially villagers living near the Bauni Mountains. We also interviewed village chiefs and a local monarch in Tangaza, who corroborated Rabiu’s account, stating that the strike failed to reach its target, despite public claims by US and Nigerian officials.  “No terrorist was found dead throughout our communities,” said Alhaji Bunu, the traditional ruler of the Gwangwano District in Tangaza LGA. “We saw nothing like dead bodies, even at the Bauni Mountains where the bomb fell. The same Lakurawas we knew are still here, loitering around our communities. We are still mingling with them.” Fireballs, flaming narratives  A few days after the strike, the Nigerian government claimed “a total of 16 GPS-guided precision munitions were deployed using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms, successfully neutralising the targeted ISIS elements attempting to penetrate Nigeria from the Sahel corridor”. Donald Trump, the US President, had said that the strike eliminated Islamic State terrorists who had been “viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries”. That narrative had lingered for years and intensified in the final months of 2025, when the US designated Nigeria a country of particular concern and also threatened military action against terrorists operating within the country. Nigerian officials and security experts, however, dispelled the narrative, saying that Muslims, Christians, and other adherents of other faiths are victims of violent attacks and terrorism in the country. The rhetoric was inflamed again when the US announced that its Christmas Day airstrikes targeted elements of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Nigeria.  US forces have occasionally targeted ISIS terrorists in parts of Africa, especially in Somalia, often working with local intelligence to combat the violent groups. In Nigeria, however, the strike has sparked fierce debate over whether ISIS terrorists were present at the location hit. Most security experts agree that Boko Haram and the Islamic State of West African Provinces (ISWAP), which are primarily based in northeastern Nigeria, have established links to ISIS. However, the targeted Tangaza forest, which officials described as the transit hub for ISIS-affiliated terrorists, is known to be dominated by the Lakurawa group, which infiltrated Sokoto through porous borders with the Niger Republic.  Nigerian government officials have publicly claimed that the strike was conducted jointly with US forces, based on intelligence shared to fight terrorism. The country’s Minister of Information, Muhammad Idris, described it as “successful precision strikes on two major ISIS terrorist enclaves located within the Bauni forest axis of Tangaza Local Government Area, Sokoto State”. “Intelligence confirmed that these locations were being used as assembly and staging grounds by foreign ISIS elements infiltrating Nigeria from the Sahel region, in collaboration with local affiliates, to plan and execute large-scale terrorist attacks within Nigerian territory,” he said. Yet the circumstances surrounding the strike have raised concerns amongst villagers in Sokoto State and conflict researchers in the northern region. A screenshot from footage published by the US Department of War of a missile being fired from a military vessel on Dec. 25, 2025. Was the precision strike successful? HumAngle began gathering witness accounts moments after the air raid, tracing events before, during, and after the missiles were launched. Residents of Bauni village, where the strike happened, said they have seen no sign that any terrorist was hit.  We interviewed a number of  Bauni locals, who had travelled from the village to a safer place in Tangaza to share their accounts. In separate interviews, they all echoed one thing: the terrorists had long left the site of the attack before the missile was launched. The strike raised curiosity in the communities, as villagers insisted they would know if any terrorist was killed or if any of them were injured.  Kasimu Hassan, a Bauni villager, told HumAngle that the Lakurawa terrorists had absolute control over them, and the airstrike hadn’t ended their reign. In Bauni, he said, no villager was allowed to welcome visitors or accept strangers without notifying the Lakurawa terrorists. He stated that anyone caught doing that could be traced, tried, and executed. “This has been the situation we are in. Not even a single Lakurawa was killed or injured by the US explosion in Tangaza LGA. Some of them come to our mosques to pray, visit our markets to buy commodities, and stop over at our houses to exchange pleasantries in forceful smiles,” Kasimu said, adding that “the Lakurawa terrorists are still in our villages hanging around the bush even after the explosion.” At least four other Bauni villagers confirmed Hassan’s claims. One said fires burned in the surrounding bush for days after the strike. Despite official claims that a Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) was underway, locals said they had not seen security operatives surveilling the area for such an assessment.  During our on-the-ground reporting, HumAngle spotted a police anti-bomb squad along the road to Tangaza, but locals insisted that officers have refused to come near the site for any post-strike surveillance. Sanusi Abubakar, the spokesperson for Sokoto State Police Command, has not responded to HumAngle’s inquiry into why the anti-bomb squad has refused to visit the communities for the assessment. “It was Ardo Kyaure, a terrorist leader, who came to tell us that there is a lot of debris on the Bauni Mountains and another undetonated bomb deposited there,” Kasimu added. Terrorists taking cover in civilian villages  After the strikes, villagers said the Lakurawa terrorists increasingly sought refuge inside civilian settlements, avoiding the Bauni Mountains, where they usually live. Magaji Abdullahi, the village head of Bauni, confirmed this to HumAngle, noting that the airstrike only resulted in moving terrorists into civilian settlements.  “The mountains used to be our hunting point in the last 15 to 20 years,” said Magaji. “It is not accessible even to our local hunters anymore, except recently, when the Lakurawa terrorists mixed up with us. The Nigerian government abandoned us for years; the only military base available to us was in the far-off town of Gwangwano. They tried a lot in securing only the centre of Gwangwano effectively, but there is no peace in other areas.” He also stressed that villagers are left with no choice but to cohabit with the terrorists due to the absence of government in the area. The Lakurawa terror group now controls much of Gwangwano District, which encompasses villages such as Bauni, Garin Mano, Mugunho, Kaidaji, and Kandam. The palace of the Gwangwano District monarch in Tangaza LGA. Photo: Abdullahi Abubakar/HumAngle. Muazu Magaji, another witness of the strike, had left the Kaidaji village to settle down in the Tangaza town, waiting for the coast to clear. He was there when the missile lightning illuminated the community. Despite the reverberating sounds that came with the airstrike, Magaji said, terrorists were watching from afar, with Ardo Kyaure calling others who might still be around the Bauni forest “to leave”. “I was walking from Kaidaji to Bauni when the bomb exploded that night,” he recalled. “We already figured out something was about to happen because of the way we saw how the Lawkurawas were moving out of the forest zone to our settlements on the day of the attack.” After the airstrike, on Saturday, Dec. 26, witness accounts revealed that terrorists came to sniff around to know what might come next. Sanusi Dubudari, one of the fleeing residents from Kaidaji, said: “We saw 11 Lakurawa terrorists in Kaidaji village asking residents whether they found their ₦7 million cash while they were running on Friday.” A school in the Tangaza town. Photo: Abdullahi Abubakar/HumAngle. Based on several local accounts, the Lakurawa terrorists have blended in really well with the villagers in Tangaza, making it difficult for security to hunt them down over fear of collateral damage. Although the terrorists moved into Sokoto from countries like Mali, the Niger Republic, and Burkina Faso, they have formed a strong alliance with locally-rooted terrorists, who made it easy for them to navigate the terrain seamlessly, sometimes hiding under the shield of locals during military raids. They used the same tactics during the US airstrike targeting ISIS elements in the state. Apart from Ardo Kyaure, Charambe Damba is another indigenous terrorist working in cahoots with the Lakurawa group. He resided in Illela, a town bordering the Niger Republic, but recently relocated to Bauni to set up a terrorist camp on the mountain and in the forest of the locality. One of the known foreign-linked Lakurawa terrorists is called Asasanta, who is from the Republic of Mali. Other local accomplices were identified as Jammare from the Alela village and Buba Holo from the Gwangwano community in the Tangaza LGA. Near-surface aerial bombing  HumAngle matched witness accounts with satellite intelligence and geospatial analysis to assess the effectiveness of the so-called precision airstrike. For weeks, we reconstructed the events leading up to the airstrike and what happened later, merging open-source intelligence with on-the-ground reporting. At the time of this investigation, no government or military official (including bomb disposal units) and no journalists had accessed the actual blast site. There were also no photos or after-action reports, which are typically shared on the Nigerian military’s social media channels after air raids. We first used Google Earth imagery as a base map to scan for fire activity that matched the date and timeframe of the strike. With no confirmed coordinates from official or ground sources, we overlaid NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), a US National Aeronautics and Space Administration-run detection tool providing real-time satellite data on active fire hotspots globally. Multiple fire detections appeared about three kilometres south of Nukuru, in the rocky mountainous terrain of the Bauni area. These terrain features matched the location described by our sources and are more than 11 km west of the Bauni Forest Reserve. There were no fire detections deep inside the forest during the relevant period.  The probable strike area in the Bauni Mountains. Map illustration: Mansir Muhammed/HumAngle Kamdan-Bauni Mountains and Gwangwano environment: We marked the area where the NASA satellite recorded fire activities succeeding the December 25 strike. Multiple heat signatures were measured across the mountain vegetation. Map: Mansir Muhammed/HumAngle From satellite images, the Gwangwano district, including the Bauni village, looks empty. Here, villages don’t spread out; they sit in small clusters, and there’s a lot of space before the next one. Farmland, open savannah, hills, and stretches of land also seem unused. But once you zoom in and start following the details, it becomes clear that the place is just not organised the way a typical rural town would be. Through extensive geospatial analyses, HumAngle identified recent motorcycle tracks within the Bauni locality – thin lines, sometimes barely visible, cutting through farmland, climbing hills, disappearing into forested areas, and reappearing elsewhere. The tracks were nearly everywhere at the time of this satellite intelligence analysis. One route splits into three, then those split again. Some lead straight into villages, others run around the edges, into the hills, or toward areas where there are no visible settlements at all. This matches what witnesses told us about the Lakurawa terrorists moving on motorcycles in large numbers, and leaving the hill. Up in the hills and mountain areas, especially around the forest reserve and the expanse of land next to it, there are no villages — just small clearings and faint shapes that don’t look like farmland or houses, with tracks leading in and out. People familiar with this area say these are temporary shelters, where terrorists survive seamlessly, hunting small animals, foraging, and riding into town to buy supplies, and then returning. Here, locals said, terrorists don’t need to live deep inside the forest reserve; the hills and forest-adjacent land outside it are enough. They’re close to communities but not inside them – close enough to reach markets or villages, far enough to stay out of sight.  When we overlaid the NASA fire data from the days after Dec. 25, 2025, the locations lined up with this pattern. The fires were not inside a village, nor deep in the forest reserve. They appeared in terrain that fits how people actually use this landscape — hilly, open, connected by tracks, and close enough to settlements to be seen and felt, but not inside them. However, we found a dense network of informal routes that makes movement easy and law enforcement’s control almost impossible. Using Google Earth Pro, we reviewed 2023 imagery of the hills and mountain range south of Nukuru village and the Bauni Mountain and marked points of interest (POIs) across the landscape. The only visible human features in this sparse environment are isolated huts, farmhouses, small clearings under trees, and faint impressions that could be temporary living units. We presented the satellite review to some of the enlightened locals; they believe that if a munition struck a fixed structure there, even a light one, there would be some visible trace.  When we obtained the latest 2025 Planet imagery, we overlaid the same POIs onto the new images and checked them individually. Most structures were still present; some appeared less distinct, likely due to resolution, seasonal change, or abandonment, but none showed clear signs of blast damage, scorched ground, or collapsed structures. In a few cases, huts visible in 2023 were no longer visible in 2025, yet the sandy compound remained intact, without burn marks or disturbed vegetation. This clearly shows that no permanent or semi-permanent structure in the area was directly hit – at least within the limits of our assessments. Satellite imagery showing POIs in Nukuru village and the Bauni Mountain. Analysis: Mansir Muhammed/HumAngle The satellite imagery analyses and eyewitness accounts point away from a classic ground-impact strike. There is no visible crater, no destroyed structure, or abrupt disruption of living units. The evidence fits more closely with a high-energy detonation that occurred at or above ground level, producing intense light, a strong pressure wave felt several kilometres away, and secondary fires in surrounding vegetation.  Our findings corroborate locals’ accounts of sighting the flash and feeling the vibration despite being several kilometres from the fire detections. A near-surface detonation transfers more energy into the air, creating light and shock without leaving deep or lasting ground damage. HumAngle’s satellite investigation shows no clear impact point. The cumulative evidence from witness statements, NASA fire detection, and high-resolution satellite imagery indicates that the US missile strike may not have hit the prime targets.  A recent New York Times story on the incident quoted two anonymous US government officials, who said the strike was “a one-time event” intended to scare terrorists while appeasing the Nigerian Christians that the US has their back, and that the warship responsible for launching the strike has since been withdrawn from the Gulf of Guinea. Some local conflict and terrorism experts said the US airstrike largely failed to achieve its publicly stated mission. James Barnett, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute, who has researched African conflicts for years, believes that the strike “was performative”. “It was not a success,” he noted. “It may not have even killed any militants. And it certainly did not make Christians there safer (possibly the opposite).” Seeds of doubt and misinformation Meanwhile, in Jabo, a civilian community in Sokoto’s Tambuwal LGA, kilometres away from Tangaza, where the airstrike also landed, seeds of doubt and misinformation are growing among residents, who believe that the US is targeting Muslim settlements.  The locals gave accounts of rays of light from flying fireballs and vibrations similar to those of the Tangaza villagers, except that they insisted that the Jabo area does not host terror groups and has not witnessed any terrorist attacks in the past decade. They wondered why such a tactical bombing would be aimed at their peaceful community.  After HumAngle’s report of the residents’ accounts, the Nigerian government provided a counternarrative, saying what locals saw was debris from the air assaults on terrorists in faraway Tangaza. Residents of Offa, Kwara State, also experienced what the Nigerian Information Minister described as “debris from expended munitions”. Military authorities have urged civilian residents in Sokoto and Kwara to stop keeping the unexploded ordnance found at the sites of the raid. This came after videos appeared online showing locals scavenging exploded and unexploded debris at strike sites in Sokoto, raising concerns about potential deadly blasts. “We do not expect civilians to pick up or keep such materials,” Major General Michael Onoja, Director of Defence Media Operations, said. “We can only appeal to them to return all materials that may prove harmful to them.” Media misreporting Isa Salihu, the chairperson of the Tangaza local council, confirmed that the US-led aerial assault actually hit a known terrorist hub in the area, but stressed that details of the operation were still sketchy. “We cannot yet confirm if targets were killed,” he said. “We are awaiting detailed security reports to determine the impact and to verify if there were any civilian casualties.” However, some local media organisations in Nigeria erroneously reported the local leader affirming that the “precision strike” hit the targeted terrorists.  A day after the strike, the Sokoto State government, through Abubakar Bawa, the state’s spokesperson, had issued a statement titled: “Nigeria-US Aistrike Hits Terrorist Targets in Tangaza”. But the content of the statement betrayed its title, as it merely reiterated what the local council chairperson said. “The impact could not be immediately determined, as they await assessment of the Joint Operations,” the statement read. Bawa and the local chairman did not respond to HumAngle’s calls and messages for further clarification on their statements.

OFFA, Nigeria — When President Donald Trump announced U.S. airstrikes in Nigeria on Christmas night, he declared that his newly rebranded War Department had conducted “numerous perfect strikes” against “ISIS Terrorist Scum.” But warheads in four of the 16 Tomahawk missiles that were fired that night appeared not to explode, according to Nigerian officials, analysts and imagery reviewed by The Washington Post. Residents said one of the unexploded munitions landed in an onion field in the village of Jabo, in northwest Nigeria, while another hit residential buildings in Offa, around 300 miles to the south. The third Tomahawk crashed in an agricultural field outside Offa, according to a state police official, and the fourth was recovered by Nigerian police in a forest in Zugurma, 120 miles to the north. It is unclear why the four Tomahawks didn’t detonate. Experts suggested a few possibilities, including mechanical failures or a decision by commanders to crash them because conditions at the target sites may have changed. The target of the remaining missiles and the damage they inflicted remain unclear, with U.S. officials and analysts casting doubt on their effectiveness. As Trump resorts to force against Islamist militants who he says are persecuting Christians in Nigeria, the first strikes in the campaign illustrated the limits of American intelligence and military capabilities in West Africa. In a statement late on Dec. 25, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which oversees American military operations on the continent, said its initial assessment was that “multiple ISIS terrorists” were killed in the strikes. The targets, according to Nigeria’s government, were “terrorist enclaves located within the Bauni forest” in northwestern Sokoto State. Tomahawk warhead locations At least four Tomahawk missile warheads were found in Nigeria after reported U.S. airstrikes were carried out in Sokoto State. Two were recovered near Offa town, one in the Zugurma community and another in Jabo village. Given the location, Nigerian and Western analysts said, it was unlikely that the strikes hit high-level members of the Islamic State, who are most active in the northeast of the country. More likely, they said, the attack targeted lower-level militants associated with a newer Islamist group called Lakurawa, whose relationship with the Islamic State is disputed by researchers. Nigeria provided the intelligence for the strikes, according to two U.S. officials, who both said it is difficult for the United States to determine which groups are operating on the ground and their affiliations. “We have nothing in the area,” one of the officials said, referring to the intelligence assets needed to understand militant networks. In linking the targets to the Islamic State, AFRICOM overstated its confidence in the identity of the fighters, one of the U.S. officials said, speaking like others in this article on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. The operation, the official said, “was likely not very effective and did not remove any camps or capabilities.” Neither the White House nor the Pentagon answered questions from The Post about the unexploded Tomahawks, or about the affiliation and number of militants killed. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement, “The airstrike in Nigeria was planned and executed on intelligence shared between U.S. and Nigerian Defense Forces. Prior to executing the airstrike, communication and coordination with Nigerian partners in addition to a thorough review of the targeted location and ISIS connections occurred to deliberately ensure the mission was executed to maximize effect and minimize risk of harm to civilians.” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement that U.S. forces “successfully took out” many “radical ISIS terrorists using powerful and precise strikes.” A Nigerian defense official said that at least four unexploded missiles that were part of the Christmas night strikes have been identified — two in the Offa area, one in Jabo and one in Niger State. The official said that the explosives unit of Nigeria’s police department is investigating the cause. Some of the other 16 missiles hit militant targets, the official added, but assessing the casualties has been difficult because “the terrorists are in ungoverned spaces.” Daniel Bwala, an adviser to Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, said the targets were chosen after weeks of intelligence-gathering in the northwest, which he said has become an important corridor linking Islamist extremists in Nigeria with fellow fighters in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — the region known as the Sahel — a global epicenter of terrorism. But the other U.S. official noted that the decision to target Lakurawa, a relatively minor militant group, seemed to have been driven by Nigeria’s own internal calculations. “It’s not clear if it’s incompetence or intention” on the part of the Nigerian government, said a former U.S. official with experience in the region, saying Washington had placed too much confidence in its counterparts in Abuja. “I’m not sure,” the former official added, if the fighters targeted “are worth the price of one Tomahawk.” Failure to detonate On Nov. 1, Trump threatened to go “guns-a-blazing” into Nigeria if its government did not stop the killing of “our CHERISHED Christians!” by “Islamic Terrorists.” The sudden threat alarmed Nigerian officials, who said they would welcome help from the United States in addressing terrorism but rejected the notion that Christians were being killed disproportionately — or that the state was allowing it to happen. Violence in Nigeria — a nation of 230 million struggling to maintain security on multiple fronts — is more complex than Trump and his allies have suggested, according to Nigerian and Western analysts. Although Islamist militants aligned with the Islamic State and Boko Haram have killed Christians, they said, their attacks have targeted moderate Muslims as well. And in central Nigeria, where fighting between Muslim herders and Christian farmers has intensified, the battle is more over resources than religion, analysts said. Within AFRICOM, there were concerns leading up to the strike about how effective it would be, given the lack of U.S. intelligence in the region and the choice of weapon, according to one of the current U.S. officials and the former official. The Post reported similar doubts among decision-makers in November after Trump first threatened military action. Each Tomahawk missile is around 3,000 pounds, with warheads inside weighing around 1,000 pounds, according to the Pentagon. They come equipped with onboard cameras that send images of the target to military operators, giving them visibility during flight. An individual Tomahawk costs around $2 million, according to estimates from the Defense Department, which means the strike on Nigeria used more than $30 million in weaponry. The 16 missiles U.S. and Nigerian officials said were fired on Christmas night came from a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea. If four did not explode, as the evidence suggests, that would place the failure rate at 25 percent — a surprisingly elevated figure for a missile that reported a 90 percent success rate more than two decades ago, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. In the immediate aftermath of the strike, images began circulating on social media claiming to show unexploded American weaponry. Hany Farid, a digital forensics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, reviewed photos of the four unexploded Tomahawk warheads at The Post’s request and said he did not see “any evidence of manipulation or AI-generation.” The locations of photos showing damaged residential buildings and the warhead in Offa were confirmed by The Post, while the presence of another unexploded warhead in the onion field in Jabo was corroborated by a villager. Adetoun Ejire-Adeyemi, the spokeswoman for the Kwara State police, told The Post that a third warhead had been recovered on Dec. 26 from a field in Oro, about 13 miles outside of Offa. The final unexploded munition was discovered Tuesday by locals in the remote community of Zugurma, between Offa and Jabo, according to Wasiu Abiodun, a spokesman for the Niger State police. The remnants appear to be warheads from inside Tomahawk missiles, according to X posts from Trevor Ball, a former explosive ordnance disposal technician for the U.S. Army. Ball’s findings were independently confirmed to The Post by researchers from Armament Research Services (ARES), a munitions research and analysis consultancy, and by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a U.S.-based monitoring group. The unexploded warhead that caused the most damage landed in the courtyard of the Solid Worth Hotel in Offa, The Post found, around three-tenths of a mile from another site where apparent munitions debris were strewn amid the ruins of residential buildings. N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of ARES, told The Post that the damage to the buildings was “consistent with the impact of a munition which failed to detonate.” The debris field suggested that the missile came apart, he added, with the denser warhead probably passing through the residential buildings and landing in the hotel, while lighter components were scattered around the area of impact. The Post could not determine why the missiles didn’t detonate. Several factors could have played a role, including mechanical failures or other issues known only to those involved in the attack, experts said. They noted that Tomahawks are preprogrammed with a target location and use sophisticated guidance systems to get there, including data of the terrain they will travel through and GPS for course correction. The missile also does not arm until later in its flight. The missile that struck the building in Offa may have suffered from a mechanical problem, said Arch Macy, a retired Navy officer who worked on the Tomahawk program. But the three other unexploded warheads found in fields and a forest away from civilians suggest possible navigational issues or commanders deciding to intentionally crash them, he said. The missiles travel at subsonic speeds, and it may have taken one or more hours for them to reach their targets. In that time, the targets may have moved, or the intelligence provided by Nigeria may have degraded by the time the missiles were in the air, Macy said. In such cases, commanders can decide to crash the Tomahawks in a location of their choosing. “If you want to dump it in a field, then you can do that if you don’t want it to hit wherever you told it to originally go,” Macy said. “More likely they were diverted from their original target and there wasn’t any other usable target or approved target nearby you could divert them to.” Tomahawks are often chosen when commanders want to avoid high-risk operations that would threaten manned aircraft. Analysts have raised concerns that they are not being replenished fast enough after being used in U.S. strikes in Yemen and Iran — and should be stockpiled in the event of conflict with Russia or China. Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, urged the Trump administration to “stop wasting Tomahawks on terrorists with no air defenses.” ‘A ball of fire’ When she “heard a loud bang and the wall started cracking,” on Christmas night, Offa resident Morenike Saka, 67, thought she was dreaming. “I began to scream for help because I was stuck and trying to crawl my way out of the room, but a big piece of concrete had blocked the way,” she told The Post. She was rescued from the rubble by a boy who lived next door. “I’m still very shocked by the incident,” Saka said. The unexploded missile tore through her apartment building in southwestern Nigeria, which was home to some eight people and had adjoining shops. Houses next door and a nearby hotel were also damaged, residents said. “I was in my room when it happened and was buried under the ruins,” said Musa Soliu, 28, another resident of the apartment building. “It took a while before they were able to pull me out.” Soliu said he wasn’t able to salvage any belongings from his apartment and is still in the clothes he was wearing on the night of the attack. “I don’t even know where to restart my life,” he said. Many locals have nowhere to stay and are squatting with relatives, they said. And the village is still gripped by fear. “There’s no clear explanation on why it fell in Offa, many kilometers from its target point,” said Hammed Suleiman, a 29-year-old resident. “The government needs to be transparent with us and answer these questions,” he said, “to restore public confidence.” The live warheads would have posed a significant hazard for civilians in the area, experts said. Unexploded ordnance left behind by U.S. forces maim and kill scores of people every year globally, according to watchdog groups, even decades after their initial use. In a news conference last week, Michael Onoja, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Defense Ministry, said that special units had been dispatched to recover the remains of missiles and warned civilians against picking up or keeping the materials. In Jabo, a typically quiet village in northwest Nigeria, Abubakar Umar, a 42-year-old farmer, recalled being in his room around 10:30 p.m. on Dec. 25 when he heard a “very loud sound, like an aircraft about to land” and felt his house start to shake. When he and his neighbors rushed outside, he said, they “saw an object that looked like a ball of fire” in a nearby onion field. Only after a few hours, when the fire had died down and police started to clear the debris, did they begin to piece together what had happened. “We do not have anything like a bandits’ camp or ISIS presence here,” Umar said. At least two missiles struck in the Jabo area, said Nuhu Umar, a 63-year-old retired civil servant — one that exploded and another that did not. The missile that detonated landed a few meters from his family’s farm, said Umar, who was in the regional capital on the night of the strikes but returned the next morning. The missile that did not explode landed in another farmer’s field about one kilometer away, he said, adding that residents had raced toward the site and collected debris. “I tried to tell people to be cautious,” Umar said, “that they can never tell what danger is in there.” Fighters in the forest In a Dec. 26 statement on X, Mohammed Idris, a Nigerian government spokesman, said the targets of the strikes were “foreign ISIS elements” located in the Bauni forest axis of the Tangaza local government area, in the northwest. NASA satellites appeared to pick up a fire on Dec. 26 in a wooded area of Tangaza soon after the attacks, according to NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System site. Satellite imagery taken Dec. 26 from Planet Labs and reviewed by The Post also revealed newly scorched ground in an area with healthy vegetation just two days before. Malik Samuel, a Nigerian security researcher at Good Governance Africa, who has done recent field research in the area, said he was told by his contacts within Lakurawa that the militant group sustained significant casualties but that its leader was not hit. In his interviews with Lakurawa members, Samuel said, they claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda rather than the Islamic State. Much remains unknown about Lakurawa, and its objectives are disputed by analysts. But most agree that the Islamist militants — many of them originally from the central Sahel — were invited to Northwest Nigeria by local authorities around 2017 to protect residents from bandits. The recruits implemented a strict version of Islamic law, analysts said, and over time came to terrorize the communities they were meant to protect. Last year, Lakurawa was designated as a terrorist group by the Nigerian government. The group was probably weakened by the strike, Samuel said, but has gone on the offensive in its aftermath, killing at least 21 civilians on Dec. 31 in neighboring Kebbi State. At least nine people were beheaded, he said, and the rest were shot. While the motive for the attack was unclear, Samuel said, it underscored a sobering reality. For future U.S. strikes to be effective, he said, they would have to drive the group out of Nigeria. Otherwise, he said, “they will only lead to more violence.”

OFFA, Nigeria — When President Donald Trump announced U.S. airstrikes in Nigeria on Christmas night, he declared that his newly rebranded War Department had conducted “numerous perfect strikes” against “ISIS Terrorist Scum.” But warheads in four of the 16 Tomahawk missiles that were fired that night appeared not to explode, according to Nigerian officials, analysts and imagery reviewed by The Washington Post. Residents said one of the unexploded munitions landed in an onion field in the village of Jabo, in northwest Nigeria, while another hit residential buildings in Offa, around 300 miles to the south. The third Tomahawk crashed in an agricultural field outside Offa, according to a state police official, and the fourth was recovered by Nigerian police in a forest in Zugurma, 120 miles to the north. It is unclear why the four Tomahawks didn’t detonate. Experts suggested a few possibilities, including mechanical failures or a decision by commanders to crash them because conditions at the target sites may have changed. The target of the remaining missiles and the damage they inflicted remain unclear, with U.S. officials and analysts casting doubt on their effectiveness. As Trump resorts to force against Islamist militants who he says are persecuting Christians in Nigeria, the first strikes in the campaign illustrated the limits of American intelligence and military capabilities in West Africa. In a statement late on Dec. 25, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which oversees American military operations on the continent, said its initial assessment was that “multiple ISIS terrorists” were killed in the strikes. The targets, according to Nigeria’s government, were “terrorist enclaves located within the Bauni forest” in northwestern Sokoto State. Tomahawk warhead locations At least four Tomahawk missile warheads were found in Nigeria after reported U.S. airstrikes were carried out in Sokoto State. Two were recovered near Offa town, one in the Zugurma community and another in Jabo village. Given the location, Nigerian and Western analysts said, it was unlikely that the strikes hit high-level members of the Islamic State, who are most active in the northeast of the country. More likely, they said, the attack targeted lower-level militants associated with a newer Islamist group called Lakurawa, whose relationship with the Islamic State is disputed by researchers. Nigeria provided the intelligence for the strikes, according to two U.S. officials, who both said it is difficult for the United States to determine which groups are operating on the ground and their affiliations. “We have nothing in the area,” one of the officials said, referring to the intelligence assets needed to understand militant networks. In linking the targets to the Islamic State, AFRICOM overstated its confidence in the identity of the fighters, one of the U.S. officials said, speaking like others in this article on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. The operation, the official said, “was likely not very effective and did not remove any camps or capabilities.” Neither the White House nor the Pentagon answered questions from The Post about the unexploded Tomahawks, or about the affiliation and number of militants killed. Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement, “The airstrike in Nigeria was planned and executed on intelligence shared between U.S. and Nigerian Defense Forces. Prior to executing the airstrike, communication and coordination with Nigerian partners in addition to a thorough review of the targeted location and ISIS connections occurred to deliberately ensure the mission was executed to maximize effect and minimize risk of harm to civilians.” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said in a statement that U.S. forces “successfully took out” many “radical ISIS terrorists using powerful and precise strikes.” A Nigerian defense official said that at least four unexploded missiles that were part of the Christmas night strikes have been identified — two in the Offa area, one in Jabo and one in Niger State. The official said that the explosives unit of Nigeria’s police department is investigating the cause. Some of the other 16 missiles hit militant targets, the official added, but assessing the casualties has been difficult because “the terrorists are in ungoverned spaces.” Daniel Bwala, an adviser to Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, said the targets were chosen after weeks of intelligence-gathering in the northwest, which he said has become an important corridor linking Islamist extremists in Nigeria with fellow fighters in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — the region known as the Sahel — a global epicenter of terrorism. But the other U.S. official noted that the decision to target Lakurawa, a relatively minor militant group, seemed to have been driven by Nigeria’s own internal calculations. “It’s not clear if it’s incompetence or intention” on the part of the Nigerian government, said a former U.S. official with experience in the region, saying Washington had placed too much confidence in its counterparts in Abuja. “I’m not sure,” the former official added, if the fighters targeted “are worth the price of one Tomahawk.” Failure to detonate On Nov. 1, Trump threatened to go “guns-a-blazing” into Nigeria if its government did not stop the killing of “our CHERISHED Christians!” by “Islamic Terrorists.” The sudden threat alarmed Nigerian officials, who said they would welcome help from the United States in addressing terrorism but rejected the notion that Christians were being killed disproportionately — or that the state was allowing it to happen. Violence in Nigeria — a nation of 230 million struggling to maintain security on multiple fronts — is more complex than Trump and his allies have suggested, according to Nigerian and Western analysts. Although Islamist militants aligned with the Islamic State and Boko Haram have killed Christians, they said, their attacks have targeted moderate Muslims as well. And in central Nigeria, where fighting between Muslim herders and Christian farmers has intensified, the battle is more over resources than religion, analysts said. Within AFRICOM, there were concerns leading up to the strike about how effective it would be, given the lack of U.S. intelligence in the region and the choice of weapon, according to one of the current U.S. officials and the former official. The Post reported similar doubts among decision-makers in November after Trump first threatened military action. Each Tomahawk missile is around 3,000 pounds, with warheads inside weighing around 1,000 pounds, according to the Pentagon. They come equipped with onboard cameras that send images of the target to military operators, giving them visibility during flight. An individual Tomahawk costs around $2 million, according to estimates from the Defense Department, which means the strike on Nigeria used more than $30 million in weaponry. The 16 missiles U.S. and Nigerian officials said were fired on Christmas night came from a Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea. If four did not explode, as the evidence suggests, that would place the failure rate at 25 percent — a surprisingly elevated figure for a missile that reported a 90 percent success rate more than two decades ago, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. In the immediate aftermath of the strike, images began circulating on social media claiming to show unexploded American weaponry. Hany Farid, a digital forensics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, reviewed photos of the four unexploded Tomahawk warheads at The Post’s request and said he did not see “any evidence of manipulation or AI-generation.” The locations of photos showing damaged residential buildings and the warhead in Offa were confirmed by The Post, while the presence of another unexploded warhead in the onion field in Jabo was corroborated by a villager. Adetoun Ejire-Adeyemi, the spokeswoman for the Kwara State police, told The Post that a third warhead had been recovered on Dec. 26 from a field in Oro, about 13 miles outside of Offa. The final unexploded munition was discovered Tuesday by locals in the remote community of Zugurma, between Offa and Jabo, according to Wasiu Abiodun, a spokesman for the Niger State police. The remnants appear to be warheads from inside Tomahawk missiles, according to X posts from Trevor Ball, a former explosive ordnance disposal technician for the U.S. Army. Ball’s findings were independently confirmed to The Post by researchers from Armament Research Services (ARES), a munitions research and analysis consultancy, and by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a U.S.-based monitoring group. The unexploded warhead that caused the most damage landed in the courtyard of the Solid Worth Hotel in Offa, The Post found, around three-tenths of a mile from another site where apparent munitions debris were strewn amid the ruins of residential buildings. N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of ARES, told The Post that the damage to the buildings was “consistent with the impact of a munition which failed to detonate.” The debris field suggested that the missile came apart, he added, with the denser warhead probably passing through the residential buildings and landing in the hotel, while lighter components were scattered around the area of impact. The Post could not determine why the missiles didn’t detonate. Several factors could have played a role, including mechanical failures or other issues known only to those involved in the attack, experts said. They noted that Tomahawks are preprogrammed with a target location and use sophisticated guidance systems to get there, including data of the terrain they will travel through and GPS for course correction. The missile also does not arm until later in its flight. The missile that struck the building in Offa may have suffered from a mechanical problem, said Arch Macy, a retired Navy officer who worked on the Tomahawk program. But the three other unexploded warheads found in fields and a forest away from civilians suggest possible navigational issues or commanders deciding to intentionally crash them, he said. The missiles travel at subsonic speeds, and it may have taken one or more hours for them to reach their targets. In that time, the targets may have moved, or the intelligence provided by Nigeria may have degraded by the time the missiles were in the air, Macy said. In such cases, commanders can decide to crash the Tomahawks in a location of their choosing. “If you want to dump it in a field, then you can do that if you don’t want it to hit wherever you told it to originally go,” Macy said. “More likely they were diverted from their original target and there wasn’t any other usable target or approved target nearby you could divert them to.” Tomahawks are often chosen when commanders want to avoid high-risk operations that would threaten manned aircraft. Analysts have raised concerns that they are not being replenished fast enough after being used in U.S. strikes in Yemen and Iran — and should be stockpiled in the event of conflict with Russia or China. Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies, urged the Trump administration to “stop wasting Tomahawks on terrorists with no air defenses.” ‘A ball of fire’ When she “heard a loud bang and the wall started cracking,” on Christmas night, Offa resident Morenike Saka, 67, thought she was dreaming. “I began to scream for help because I was stuck and trying to crawl my way out of the room, but a big piece of concrete had blocked the way,” she told The Post. She was rescued from the rubble by a boy who lived next door. “I’m still very shocked by the incident,” Saka said. The unexploded missile tore through her apartment building in southwestern Nigeria, which was home to some eight people and had adjoining shops. Houses next door and a nearby hotel were also damaged, residents said. “I was in my room when it happened and was buried under the ruins,” said Musa Soliu, 28, another resident of the apartment building. “It took a while before they were able to pull me out.” Soliu said he wasn’t able to salvage any belongings from his apartment and is still in the clothes he was wearing on the night of the attack. “I don’t even know where to restart my life,” he said. Many locals have nowhere to stay and are squatting with relatives, they said. And the village is still gripped by fear. “There’s no clear explanation on why it fell in Offa, many kilometers from its target point,” said Hammed Suleiman, a 29-year-old resident. “The government needs to be transparent with us and answer these questions,” he said, “to restore public confidence.” The live warheads would have posed a significant hazard for civilians in the area, experts said. Unexploded ordnance left behind by U.S. forces maim and kill scores of people every year globally, according to watchdog groups, even decades after their initial use. In a news conference last week, Michael Onoja, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Defense Ministry, said that special units had been dispatched to recover the remains of missiles and warned civilians against picking up or keeping the materials. In Jabo, a typically quiet village in northwest Nigeria, Abubakar Umar, a 42-year-old farmer, recalled being in his room around 10:30 p.m. on Dec. 25 when he heard a “very loud sound, like an aircraft about to land” and felt his house start to shake. When he and his neighbors rushed outside, he said, they “saw an object that looked like a ball of fire” in a nearby onion field. Only after a few hours, when the fire had died down and police started to clear the debris, did they begin to piece together what had happened. “We do not have anything like a bandits’ camp or ISIS presence here,” Umar said. At least two missiles struck in the Jabo area, said Nuhu Umar, a 63-year-old retired civil servant — one that exploded and another that did not. The missile that detonated landed a few meters from his family’s farm, said Umar, who was in the regional capital on the night of the strikes but returned the next morning. The missile that did not explode landed in another farmer’s field about one kilometer away, he said, adding that residents had raced toward the site and collected debris. “I tried to tell people to be cautious,” Umar said, “that they can never tell what danger is in there.” Fighters in the forest In a Dec. 26 statement on X, Mohammed Idris, a Nigerian government spokesman, said the targets of the strikes were “foreign ISIS elements” located in the Bauni forest axis of the Tangaza local government area, in the northwest. NASA satellites appeared to pick up a fire on Dec. 26 in a wooded area of Tangaza soon after the attacks, according to NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System site. Satellite imagery taken Dec. 26 from Planet Labs and reviewed by The Post also revealed newly scorched ground in an area with healthy vegetation just two days before. Malik Samuel, a Nigerian security researcher at Good Governance Africa, who has done recent field research in the area, said he was told by his contacts within Lakurawa that the militant group sustained significant casualties but that its leader was not hit. In his interviews with Lakurawa members, Samuel said, they claimed allegiance to al-Qaeda rather than the Islamic State. Much remains unknown about Lakurawa, and its objectives are disputed by analysts. But most agree that the Islamist militants — many of them originally from the central Sahel — were invited to Northwest Nigeria by local authorities around 2017 to protect residents from bandits. The recruits implemented a strict version of Islamic law, analysts said, and over time came to terrorize the communities they were meant to protect. Last year, Lakurawa was designated as a terrorist group by the Nigerian government. The group was probably weakened by the strike, Samuel said, but has gone on the offensive in its aftermath, killing at least 21 civilians on Dec. 31 in neighboring Kebbi State. At least nine people were beheaded, he said, and the rest were shot. While the motive for the attack was unclear, Samuel said, it underscored a sobering reality. For future U.S. strikes to be effective, he said, they would have to drive the group out of Nigeria. Otherwise, he said, “they will only lead to more violence.”

A month before the US carried out its Christmas day attack on militants linked to the Islamic State group (IS) in north-western Nigeria, president Donald Trump had declared Nigeria a “country of particular concern”. This was due to the alleged killing of Christians by terrorist groups in the country. Trump threatened military intervention if the attacks against Christians continued. The threat became a reality on Christmas day when the US military’s Africa Command – in coordination with the Nigerian authorities – carried out strikes on terrorist locations in Sokoto state, North-West Nigeria. There were mixed reactions to the attacks. Some citizens hailed the attacks, saying they hoped they would send a message to the terrorists to desist from their activities. Others condemned the strikes, citing concerns about sovereignty. I have been researching conflicts, terrorism and the formation of insurgent groups in Nigeria and the Sahel for over a decade. After the US intervention, a key question that arises is: does the attack strengthen Nigeria’s counter-terrorism mechanisms. Or will it weaken them, and threaten national security and sovereignty? I argue that the US military intervention will indeed strengthen the hand of the Nigerian government in fighting insurgency in the short term in four ways, including enhanced intelligence gathering. Nevertheless, there’s also a risk that it will trigger unintended consequences if Nigeria doesn’t fully take charge of its counter-terrorism initiatives. These include loss of sovereignty and internal political division. Immediate gains First, the recent cooperation between the US and Nigerian military would help Nigeria with enhanced surveillance and intelligence gathering. Prior to the Christmas day bombing, the US has been conducting reconnaissance flights in Nigeria. The data gathered from these flights helped identify terrorist gatherings and movements. The US and its allies have struggled to gather intelligence in the region since closing down a US drone base in Niger following a coup in the country. The loss and subsequent withdrawal from the US drone base in Agadez has significantly degraded US and Western intelligence-gathering capabilities. This is why the US flew reconnaissance flights from Ghana for this attack. Read more: US military is leaving Niger even less secure: why it didn't succeed in combating terrorism Second, the reported military collaboration will give the Nigerian government access to state of the art military hardware and resources. The US and Nigeria’s relationship has been fractured since 2015 following the release of an Amnesty International report in which the Nigerian military was accused of gross human rights abuses. The US government immediately suspended sales of key military hardware to Abuja. It also banned Nigeria from using some US equipment already purchased. Six years later Nigeria signed a military agreement with Russia. The Christmas Day strike ordered by Trump suggests that the US might once again be willing to help Nigeria in its counter-terrorism initiatives. Third, the intervention could help Nigeria fight terrorism along its borders. The Christmas day attack is based on intelligence that terrorist cells from Niger and Burkina Faso had entered Nigeria to carry out coordinated attacks. I have previously written about how terrorism is spreading in West Africa and how international cooperation is needed to fight the surge. Such coordinated attacks could help Nigeria’s cross-border counter-terrorism initiatives. Finally, the coordinated attacks send a message to terrorist groups that there is a renewed effort to turn the heat on them. Unintended consequences There is nevertheless a risk of the US action having unintended consequences if Nigeria does not fully take charge of its counter-terrorism initiatives. Since 2009 when Boko Haram surfaced in Nigeria, the country has been battling terrorism within and around its borders. Despite counter-terrorism initiatives such as military response, intelligence coordination, community resilience, international partnerships, and rehabilitation efforts to dismantle extremist networks and address root causes, Nigeria has not been able to stop terrorism in the country. While renewed collaborations with the US is a step in the right direction, the possible dangers for Nigeria include: A loss of access and control of intelligence data. Nigeria needs to take charge of its surveillance architecture and intelligence gathering or risk a weakening of its sovereignty. Large quantities of data is collected during reconnaissance flights. But the country running the flights owns the data. It has the prerogative of what it wants to share, and when. Nigeria has been here before: when the US drone base in Agadez was operational, all the data gathered across the Sahel was analysed by the Pentagon which decided what information to relay to its partners. Nigeria should guard against this by taking charge of the reconnaissance and surveillance activities relevant to protect its national interest. Swift follow-up action. The Nigerian military needs to take advantage of the impact of the strikes. It needs to capitalise on the disarray in terrorist camps. By acting in a coordinated way after 2015, the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) was very successful in dismantling Boko Haram as an organisation and weakening its bases. But the Nigerian military needs to keep a close eye on the terror group splintering as a result of success against its military bases. The Multinational Joint Task Force’s successes was partly responsible for Boko Haram breaking into three factions in 2016. The initial strikes conducted by the US military will only be significant if the Nigerian army prevents smaller terror groups from being formed. Nigerians need to be assured the government will act in their interests. The US attack risks worsening political divisions in Nigeria if not properly managed. While Trump framed the attack as an action against the murder of Christians in the country, the Nigerian government has insisted it was part of a renewed campaign against terrorists destabilising the country. Trump’s explanation of the attack has angered some political groups in Nigeria. For instance, Islamic cleric Sheikh Ahmed Gumi vehemently condemned the US airstrikes calling Nigerians who supported the strikes ‘stupid’ and ‘misguided’. The Nigerian government must control the narrative and clearly explain how the renewed military collaboration with the US is in Nigeria’s national interest, and not targeted at particular ethnic or religious groups.

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have been granted access, use your keyboard to continue reading.The Screwdriver Salesman Behind Trump’s Airstrikes in NigeriaSpotty research from a Christian activist has been used by Republican lawmakers to justify U.S. intervention in the country.Emeka Umeagbalasi, 56, at his home in Onitsha, Nigeria, last month.Credit...Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesJan. 18, 2026In a market in southeastern Nigeria, a short man wearing one earbud recently made his way to the tool section, dodging wheelbarrows of sugar cane and porters carrying stacks of hard hats.The man, Emeka Umeagbalasi, owns a tiny shop selling screwdrivers and wrenches in this market in Onitsha, the commercial hub of southeast Nigeria.But this screwdriver salesman is also an unlikely source of research that U.S. Republican lawmakers have used to promote the misleading idea that Christians are being singled out for slaughter in Africa’s most populous nation. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Representative Riley Moore of Virginia and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey have all cited his work.Armed with his ideas, President Trump launched airstrikes on the other side of Mr. Umeagbalasi’s country on Christmas Day.To Mr. Umeagbalasi, that the American president had taken up a cause he had promoted, was “miraculous.”“If nothing is done,” he said in an interview from his home, “Nigeria will explode.” Mr. Umeagbalasi says he has documented 125,000 Christian deaths in Nigeria since 2009, but told The New York Times that he often does not verify his data. He acknowledged that his research was mainly based on “secondary sources,” including Christian interest groups, Nigerian news reports and Google searches.Mr. Cruz, Mr. Moore and Mr. Smith did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokeswoman did not address questions about Mr. Umeagbalasi’s data and methods, but said in a statement that “the massacre of Christians by radical, terrorist scum will not be tolerated.”ImageA Catholic church in Asaba, a neighboring city to Onitsha.Credit...Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesThe Nigerian government does not release comprehensive data on the number of people killed in violent attacks, or their religions. Many attacks in Nigeria go unrecorded because they happen in remote areas and are only heard of long afterward.While some research shows that Christians are being killed in large numbers in Nigeria, researchers say a lack of security and widespread impunity in the most affected parts of the country endangers both Christian and Muslim Nigerians.ImageMr. Umeagbalasi at his tool shop.Credit...Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesMr. Umeagbalasi, who is Catholic, founded the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, or Intersociety, in 2008. He runs the organization out of his home. His wife, Blessing, an evangelical Christian, is a board member.He said he has degrees in security studies and peace and conflict resolution from the National Open University of Nigeria and described himself as a very “powerful” and “knowledgeable” investigator, comparing himself with the veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour.But when questioned about the accuracy of his data, establishing the religion of victims and determining the intent of perpetrators, he admitted that he rarely travels to the regions where attacks have occurred and usually assumes the victim’s religion.Mr. Umeagbalasi has said that more than 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the first seven months of 2025. But an independent conflict-monitoring group, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, estimates that around 6,700 people, including Islamist insurgents and military personnel, were killed in the same period. Only 3,000 of them were recorded as civilians, but that data is not disaggregated for religion.Mr. Umeagbalasi explained that he determines the religious identity of victims based on where each attack occurs. If a mass abduction or killing happens in an area where he thinks many Christians live, he assumes the victims are Christians.“For instance, if killings take place in Borno today, when I look at it, I will just look at the zone where the killings take place,” he said, referring to the majority-Muslim state at the heart of Boko Haram’s deadly insurgency in Nigeria. “Once they take place in southern Borno, there is likelihood of the victims being Christians or many of them or most of them being Christians.”Many of Boko Haram’s victims are Muslim.He also gave the example of 25 schoolgirls recently kidnapped in the state of Kebbi. The girls were all Muslim, according to the school principal and local officials. But Mr. Umeagbalasi claimed that they were mostly Christian.“The girls — a majority of them are Christians, but you know what Nigerian government did?” he said. “They went and Islamized them. Gave them Islamic names just to confuse people.”Alkasim Abdulkadir, a spokesman for Nigeria’s foreign minister, denied that the government had misrepresented the girls’ religion. “There’s a lot of fallacy to his research, a lot of confirmation bias,” he said of Mr. Umeagbalasi. “He’s very performative.”ImageThe dormitories where gunmen kidnapped schoolchildren is seen in Kebbi, Nigeria, in November.Credit...Deeni Jibo/Associated PressMr. Umeagbalasi said he almost never travels to Nigeria’s Middle Belt, the region where violence against Christians is most intense. Instead, he said, he relies on “secondary sources” like news reports and Open Doors, a Christian advocacy group whose data has been cited by Mr. Trump.One of his main secondary sources is Truth Nigeria, a project founded by a filmmaker and evangelist from Iowa, Judd Saul.Like Intersociety and other Christian advocacy groups in Nigeria and the United States, Truth Nigeria frequently identifies the perpetrators of attacks on Christians in the country as “Fulani ethnic militias.” The Fulani are an ethnic group with tens of millions of mostly Muslim members, some of whom are herders whose ancestors have roamed across West Africa for centuries.Mr. Umeagbalasi called the Fulani “animals” and said all Fulanis should be confined to one Nigerian state, a move that would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.Researchers, journalists and prominent Christians regularly dispute Mr. Umeagbalasi’s figures.Nnamdi Obasi, the Nigeria adviser for the International Crisis Group, described Intersociety’s methodology as “a total blank” and said that the figures in Intersociety’s reports did not add up correctly.“The basic addition is very, very faulty,” he said.Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic bishop of Sokoto, the northwestern Nigerian state that the United States bombed in December, said in an interview that focusing too much on the data about Christians obscured a more important issue. “Focus on the fact that this state is weak and doesn’t have the capacity to protect its people,” he said.Mr. Umeagbalasi remains undeterred by criticism.ImageEmeka Umeagbalasi’s awards at his home.Credit...Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesHe flipped open his laptop, where he had almost completed work on his next report, titled, “The Situation of Christians in Nigeria Fueled by Jihadist Terrorism Inches a Point of No Return.”“This is our heavenly marathon,” he said.He sat in his living room, its walls painted green and black. A bookshelf was crammed with old papers and plaques. One read, “For excellent service to humanity.”He said close to 20,000 churches were destroyed in the past 16 years, and, he said, 100,000 churches existed in Nigeria.There is no government data on the number of churches in Nigeria. So where did he get the 100,000 figure?“Googled it,” he said.ImageMr. Umeagbalasi.Credit...Taiwo Aina for The New York TimesReporting was contributed by Saikou Jammeh, Dionne Searcey, Ismail Auwal and David Chidi Eleke.Ruth Maclean is the West Africa bureau chief for The Times, covering 25 countries including Nigeria, Congo, the countries in the Sahel region as well as Central Africa.A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 19, 2026, Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Screwdriver Salesman’s Data Is Shaping the U.S. Stance on Nigeria. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | SubscribeRelated ContentAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Fear and confusion gripped a village in Sokoto State following a missile strike by the United States of America in December 2025While the US Africa Command claimed the operation neutralised multiple ISIS militants, this assertion has now been challengedA report by The New York Times has shared how a screwdriver trader in Onitsha influenced the American missile strike in NigeriaLegit.ng journalist Ridwan Adeola Yusuf has over 9 years of experience covering global affairs and world news.Onitsha, Anambra State - The United States (US) relied on information and reports from an Anambra-based man, Emeka Umeagbalasi, to launch air strikes in Africa's most populous nation.Williams Uchemba celebrates his 29th birthdayAccording to a report on Sunday, January 18, 2026, by the New York Times, Umeagbalasi runs a small shop selling screwdrivers and wrenches in Onitsha, Anambra State, southeast Nigeria.New York Times' report reveals how a screwdriver trader in Onitsha, Anambra State, influenced Donald Trump’s missile strike in Nigeria. Photo credits: @TTheBattlefield, @VividProwess, @aonanuga1956 Source: TwitterIn October 2025, US President Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” in response to allegations of a Christian genocide in the country.Then, in late December, the United States launched “powerful and deadly” strikes against groups it claims are affiliated with ISIL (ISIS) in Nigeria.The US Department of War published footage of a missile being fired from a military vessel after Washington said it carried out a strike in northern Nigeria. President Trump said the attack targeted ISIL and was carried out at Nigeria’s request.However, in a January 2026 report, HumAngle described the strike as “performative” and deemed it unsuccessful.The media outfit said it gathered witness accounts moments after the US air raid, tracing events before, during, and after the missiles were launched. Residents of Bauni village in Sokoto State, where the strike happened, said they have seen no sign that any terrorist was hit. Several Bauni locals were also interviewed, and in separate interviews, they all echoed one thing: the terrorists in the northwest region of Nigeria had long left the site of the attack before the missile was launched.The strike raised curiosity in the communities, as villagers insisted they would know if any terrorist was killed or if any of them were injured.'US lawmakers cited unverified Nigerian data'Now, according to the New York Times' fresh report, Umeagbalasi, founder of the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, popularly called Intersociety, is “an unlikely source of research that US Republican lawmakers have used to promote the misleading idea that Christians are being singled out for slaughter” in Nigeria.Umeagbalasi, alongside his wife, run the non-governmental organisation from his home.The report said US lawmakers Riley Moore and Ted Cruz, whom Trump had asked to probe the Christian genocide claims in Nigeria, alongside congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, “have all cited his work”.Umeagbalasi was quoted as saying he has documented 125,000 Christian deaths in Nigeria since 2009, based on research from Google searches, Nigerian media reports, secondary sources, and advocacy groups like Open Doors, a Christian organisation whose data Trump has cited.He told the New York Times that he rarely verifies his data. He also acknowledged that he seldom travels to the regions where attacks have occurred and usually assumes the victims’ religion based on the location of the attack.The report reads:“If a mass abduction or killing happens in an area where he thinks many Christians live, he assumes the victims are Christians."Emeka Umeagbalasi, founder of Intersociety, makes claims about an alleged plot to annihilate Christians in Nigeria. Photo credit: @IU_Wakilii Source: TwitterThe salesman claimed that he has degrees in security studies, peace and conflict resolution from the National Open University of Nigeria and described himself as a very “powerful” and “knowledgeable” investigator.A self-acclaimed criminologist, Umeagbalasi is described as an expert in the report, where he alleged there is a “strategy to annihilate all Christians and Islamise Nigeria”. He claimed 100,000 churches exist in Nigeria, and about 20,000 of them were destroyed in the past 16 years. Asked about the source of his data, he simply replied, “I Googled it”.Relying on information provided by three congressmen, who have repeatedly referenced Umeagbalasi’s data, Trump authorised a volley of strikes in Nigeria on Christmas Day 2025.ADC reacts to US' airstrike in NigeriaLegit.ng earlier reported that the ADC launched a blistering attack on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu over the US airstrike in Nigeria, accusing him of outsourcing his constitutional responsibility and effectively “reporting himself to another president”.In a strongly-worded statement signed by its national spokesperson, Bolaji Abdullahi, the ADC questioned Nigeria’s role in the operation and warned that the incident poses serious risks to the country’s sovereignty, strategic autonomy and self-respect.The party argued that statements by the federal government suggest Nigeria merely played an intelligence-support role, rather than leading the operation on its own soil. Proofreading by James Ojo, copy editor at Legit.ng. Source: Legit.ng

Aloy Ejimakor, legal consultant to Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has described The New York Times report suggesting that United States airstrikes on parts of Sokoto State was based on intelligence provided by a screwdriver seller in Onitsha as a national embarrassment. Ejimakor said the Nigerian government has contradicted itself by initially crediting the intelligence report leading to the bombing to Nigerian government only to retract and blame an Onitsha screwdriver seller. New York Times had claimed that one Emeka, an Onitsha based Screwdriver Trader and ‘operator of a small NGO’ who falsely claimed to have documented “125 thousand Christian deaths” using “google searches was responsible for the Intel that led to the bombing of some parts of Sokoto State last year. However, Ejimakor posted on X, “Previously, the Nigerian government claimed the CREDIT for providing the intelligence for the US airstrike in Sokoto. “Now, the same government (thru its $9m lobbyists) has contradicted itself by shifting the CREDIT to a “screwdriver trader.” This is a national embarrassment.”

It looks like locals in ganaru area of magama lga area Niger state have discovered another unexploded America's tomahawk missile warhead... Those thinking of making scrap metal out of it, this is a 600P high explosives warhead,

The war head seems to the consistent with TLAM

Another unexploded ordnance found in a farm in oro area kwara state... It is 25km from offa... If any one comes across any suspicious object in the general area, local security should be contacted... Stay safe

US airstrikes.... The unexploded munition found in jabo village sokoto is identical to the ones found in offa kwara state.....