CNN
By Kevin Liptak, CNN
West Palm Beach, Florida (CNN) — 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.
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.”
“Whoever is prepared to work with us to fight terrorism, we’re ready, willing and able,” he said.
“We demonstrated this yesterday,” he later added.
In an earlier statement posted to 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 he was “grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation.”
In a statement shared with CNN, the Nigerian Foreign Ministry confirmed cooperation with the US on air strikes on “terrorist targets” and reiterated the country’s commitment to upholding the rights of all citizens, “irrespective of faith or ethnicity.”
Daniel Bwala, special adviser to Tinubu, told CNN: “The US and Nigeria are on the same page in the fight against terrorism.”
“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.
Trump has focused for the last several months on the plight of Christians in Nigeria, including calling in November on his secretary of defense 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.
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