US airstrikes in Nigeria this week targeted Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists from the Sahel who entered the country to work with the Lakurawa jihadist group and criminal “bandit” gangs, a spokesman for Nigerian President Bola Tinubu confirmed to AFP on Saturday.
The strikes, ordered by US President Donald Trump and launched overnight Thursday into Friday, had initially left uncertainty about their targets. Both Washington and Abuja had said the attacks hit ISIS-linked jihadists but provided no specifics on which of Nigeria’s many armed groups were involved.
“ISIS, Lakurawa and bandits were targeted,” presidential spokesman Daniel Bwala told AFP. “ISIS found their way through the Sahel to go and assist the Lakurawa and the bandits with supplies and with training,” he said.
The Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), active in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, has been fighting government forces in those countries. Security analysts have expressed growing concern about the spread of Sahel-based insurgents into Nigeria.
“The strike was conducted at a location where, historically, you have the bandits and the Lakurawa parading around that axis,” Bwala explained. “The intelligence the US government gathered, also, is that there is a mass movement of ISIS from the Sahel to that part.”
There were casualties in the attack, though it was unclear who among those targeted had been killed, he added.
The operation took place in northwestern Sokoto State, a region more commonly plagued by criminal kidnappings than jihadist violence, raising questions among security observers. Some researchers have linked Lakurawa fighters in Sokoto to ISSP, though others dispute that connection.
The strikes - reportedly delayed by Trump to occur on Christmas Day “to give a Christmas present” to the militants - follow tensions between Washington and Abuja.
In October and November, Trump accused Nigeria of allowing “persecution” and “genocide” against Christians. Nigerian officials and analysts rejected that characterization, calling it a distortion of the complex violence affecting the country, where both Christians and Muslims have been victims of jihadist attacks, intercommunal clashes, and separatist unrest.
On Christmas Eve, a suspected suicide bomber attacked a mosque in Borno State, killing at least five people.
Following the strikes, Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar emphasized the coordinated nature of the mission: “It is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.”