President Trump boasted Friday morning that ISIS “got a very bad Christmas present” after the US military carried out strikes targeting suspected terrorists in northwestern Nigeria Thursday night.
“I said yesterday, ‘Hit them on Christmas Day. It will be a Christmas present,’” Trump told WABC radio host John Catsimatidis in an interview.
“We hit ISIS, who are terrible. They are butchers. We really hit them hard in different locations. They really got hit hard yesterday. They got a very bad Christmas present.”
The Nigerian government confirmed overnight that it had collaborated with Washington on the strikes in Sokoto state, near the border with Niger.
It was not immediately clear how many sites were targeted.
The US military’s Africa Command has made an initial assessment that “multiple ISIS terrorists were killed,” but an exact number has not been released.
Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday evening that the strikes were in retaliation for attacks on Christians in the West African country, writing: “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.”
“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.”
Nigeria’s government has previously said armed groups target both Muslims and Christians, and insisted the White House’s claims oversimplify the complex security situation.
The country’s population is almost evently split between Muslims, who live primarily in the north, and Christians concentrated in the south.
More than 7,000 Christians have been massacred in Nigeria this year, according to the human rights group Intersociety.
Residents of the village of Jabo, near the site of the strikes, described seeing the night sky glow bright red and feeling intense heat from the attacks.
“It was almost like daytime,” local farmer Sanusi Madabo told the Associated Press.
Jabo residents said neighboring villages had been regularly targeted by terror attacks, though they had been spared. They reported seeing no casualties before government security forces cordoned off the area.
Aliyu Garba, a traditional leader in the village, told the AP locals rushed to collect debris left by the strikes in the hope of finding valuable metal pieces to trade.
Analysts say the strikes may have targeted the Lakurawa group, whose members typically hail from the Sahel region of Africa — which includes countries like Chad, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, and Sudan.
The Lakurawa group’s first attack was recorded around 2018, but the Nigerian government did not officially announce its presence until last year. The extent of their ties to the local ISIS branch, if any, are unknown.
However, the DC-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies reported in July that the Lakurawa group was suspected of establishing ties with Islamic terrorists and is equipped with surveillance drones and satellite communications.
Initially hired to combat criminal gangs in the area, the Africa Center reported that the Lakurawa group was responsible for 134 deaths in the previous 12 months while “cooperating with and operating more like bandits themselves.”
With Post wires
