The Christmas Day attack in Nigeria ordered by President Trump targeted two alleged Islamic State camps with more than a dozen missiles fired from a U.S. Navy warship, killing multiple militants, according to a U.S. official and a Pentagon statement.
U.S. Africa Command, which conducted the strike, said it was directed at militants “in known ISIS camps” and used intelligence from U.S. and Nigerian forces. The command said it would continue to assess the results of the strikes but wouldn’t release operational details for security reasons.
Over 12 Tomahawk missiles were launched from a U.S. Navy vessel in the Gulf of Guinea, reportedly the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Paul Ignatius.
The missile strike was supplemented by MQ-9 Reaper drones, which fired 16 additional precision munitions at militants attempting to flee into the neighboring Sahel region.
The strikes hit the “Lakurawa” group (Islamic State – Sahel Province) and ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province).
Initial assessments indicate “multiple” terrorists were killed. While debris was reported to have fallen in the villages of Jabo and Offa, no civilian casualties have been confirmed.
The military echoed Trump’s social-media post Thursday that said the strikes aimed at protecting the country’s Christian population from Islamic State. Trump characterized the violence against Nigeria’s Christians as a “genocide” on Fox News Radio last month, and said the U.S. could go in “guns-a-blazing,” with the goal of wiping out Islamist militants.
“The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X after Trump’s announcement.
Hegseth indicated there could be additional military action. “More to come…”
The U.S. ship that fired the missiles was in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Nigeria, the U.S. official said.
Inside Nigeria, the northwest is known for its criminal gangs known locally as “bandits” who abduct children, churchgoers and others in exchange for ransom payments. The Nigerian government designated the bandits as terrorists under domestic law in January 2022, allowing increased use of the military against them.
Villagers in the Tambuwal area of Sokoto heard explosions late Thursday night, with a missile hitting farmland in a predominantly Muslim area and causing a fire. “We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mainasara Mohammed, 40 years old, a resident of Jabo village, near one of the strikes.
He said villagers rushed to the scene to pick up fragments of the missile before security agencies arrived. He wasn’t aware of any fatalities in the area.
Mainasara, a Muslim, said that militants are active in the area and that his village was attacked about six months ago.
Analysts said Sokoto may have been targeted because of its strategic placement in the Sahel, the semiarid strip south of the Sahara, where al Qaeda and Islamic State are conducting insurgencies. Washington spent hundreds of millions of dollars arming and training local militaries to battle those insurgents over the past decade.
Nigeria has a population of some 237 million people, roughly split between Muslims who are predominantly in the north, and Christians who are mostly in the south. Violence against Christians has escalated in northern Nigeria during the past decade, as Islamist extremists such as Boko Haram wage an insurgency against the country’s secular government and expand their influence in the region.
In Nigeria’s central region, Christian farmers have been battling for years with a tribe of largely Muslim cattle herdsmen over dwindling natural resources. The result of these parallel conflicts is the widespread killing and abduction of both Christian and Muslim civilians.
Trump’s base within the U.S. Christian political right has been calling for the U.S. to take targeted action specifically against the killings of Christians in Nigeria.
Some Nigerians welcomed U.S. intervention, citing their own government’s failure to make headway against terrorism and banditry since the kidnapping of the Chibok girls more than a decade ago.
“Nigerian citizens will be happy with any help that is toward bringing to an end the persistent killings by bandits and terrorists,” said John Joseph Hayab, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria. “May this collaboration not be a once-off activity, but should remain a continual activity until every terrorist is defeated in Nigeria.”
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