Trump: US assaults on IS militia in Nigeria | EUROtoday

According to President Donald Trump, the US navy carried out lethal assaults on fighters from the terrorist militia “Islamic State” (IS) in Nigeria over Christmas who’re mentioned to have murdered Christians. The navy strikes befell within the northwest of the nation, the Republican wrote on the Truth Social platform on Thursday (native time). He didn’t disclose the variety of deaths.

Trump threatened that many extra terrorists can be killed if the “slaughter” of Christians continued. He additionally wrote in capital letters: “Merry Christmas to everyone, including the killed terrorists.” In the USA, Christmas is historically celebrated on December twenty fifth.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on Platform X that the killing of harmless Christians in Nigeria and elsewhere should finish. He thanked the Nigerian authorities for his or her help and cooperation.

At the start of November, the US President had already threatened navy strikes within the West African nation. Even again then, he cited the rationale that Islamist terrorists had been killing Christians there. Trump particularly addressed Nigeria’s authorities, warning that if it allowed additional bloodshed, the United States would instantly cease all support to the continent’s most populous nation and intervene there itself to root out the perpetrators of those atrocities. At the time, Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu emphasised: “Nigeria rejects and does not promote religious persecution.”

At that point, the USA labeled Nigeria as a rustic during which significantly critical violations of non secular freedom occurred (Country of Particular Concern). Countries equivalent to China and Russia are additionally on the listing. President Tinubu, nevertheless, denied that Nigeria is a religiously illiberal nation – such claims don’t replicate actuality and don’t have in mind authorities efforts to guard the liberty of faith and perception of all Nigerians.

Conflicts and violence within the nation, whose greater than 220 million inhabitants are about half Christian or Muslim, are literally more and more working alongside non secular dividing strains – however specialists normally don’t see these because the trigger. Christian communities nonetheless accuse the state of missing safety.

The US non-governmental group International Christian Concern, which paperwork the persecution of Christians worldwide, described Nigeria because the “most dangerous country in the world for Christians” in 2022. At the identical time, Muslims there are additionally victims of terrorist or bandit assaults in addition to acts of revenge.

At the top of November there was a very excessive wave of mass kidnappings in northwest Nigeria. Hundreds of youngsters and quite a few lecturers had been kidnapped from a Catholic main and secondary college, the Christian Association of Nigeria mentioned on the time. Kidnappings have turn out to be a horrible on a regular basis incidence within the north and heart of the nation: each prison gangs and Islamist terrorist teams repeatedly kidnap individuals.

This shouldn’t be the primary time that the US navy has attacked Islamist terrorists in Africa. IS positions in Somalia had been bombed a number of occasions in 2024 – earlier than Trump took workplace – and once more this yr. Some US assaults within the East African nation had been additionally aimed on the terrorist militia Al-Shabaab, which is a part of the Al-Qaeda community, which is hostile to IS.