A top Islamic State commander in Nigeria has been killed by US and Nigerian forces, announced President Donald Trump on Friday. He was the number two in the terrorist organization worldwide, according to Mr. Trump.
‘Tonight, on my instructions, the brave American forces and the armed forces of Nigeria carried out to perfection a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate from the battlefield the most active terrorist in the world,’ declared the American president on his social network Truth Social.
‘Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, number two of ISIS on a global scale, thought he could hide in Africa, but he did not know that we had sources keeping us informed of everything he was doing,’ he added.
Abu-Bilal al-Minuki was placed under American sanctions in 2023 for his ties to ISIS. Washington claimed at the time that this man, also known as Abu Bakr al-Mainuki, was born in 1982 and was from the state of Borno in northeastern Nigeria.
Bombings in Noël
‘With his elimination, the operational capabilities of ISIS around the world are significantly reduced,’ assured Mr. Trump.
The northern region of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is faced with a double insecurity: on one hand, the violence of Islamist groups and, on the other hand, that of criminal gangs, locally called ‘bandits’, which frequently carry out attacks on villages and mass kidnappings for ransom.
The increase in deadly attacks and mass kidnappings in recent months has caught the attention of the United States. The American president claims that Christians in Nigeria are ‘persecuted’ and victims of a ‘genocide’ perpetrated by ‘terrorists’, which Abuja and the majority of experts firmly deny, as the violence affects both Christians and Muslims indiscriminately.
The American military, in coordination with Nigerian authorities, carried out strikes in the state of Sokoto on Christmas Day targeting, according to Washington, ISIS jihadists. Since then, military cooperation between the two countries has strengthened.
