The United States (US) is planning to send about 200 troops to Nigeria to train the African nation’s military to fight Islamist militants, a US official said on Tuesday, weeks after President Donald Trump ordered airstrikes against what he called Islamic State targets.<\/p>\n
The US military said last week it sent a small team of troops to Nigeria without specifying a number, marking the first acknowledgment of US forces on the ground since Washington struck by air on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n
Trump has said there could be more US military action in Nigeria and\u00a0Reuters<\/em>\u00a0has reported that the US had been conducting surveillance flights over the country from Ghana since at least late November.<\/p>\n The official said the 200 troops will supplement a handful of US military personnel already in Nigeria to help local forces.<\/p>\n US, Africa Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Nigeria has come under intense pressure from Washington to act after Trump alleged the West African nation was failing to protect Christians from Islamist militants operating in the northwest.<\/p>\n The Nigerian government denies any systematic persecution of Christians, saying it is targeting Islamist fighters and other armed groups that attack and kill both Christians and Muslims.<\/p>\n Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province fighters have intensified attacks on military convoys and civilians, and the North West remains an epicentre of a 17 year Islamist insurgency.<\/p>\n Nigeria’s population of over 230 million people is roughly evenly divided among Christians, who predominate in the south, and Muslims, who predominate in the north.<\/p>\n –Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":23618,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-23617","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":null,"news_description":"US planning to send about 200 troops to Nigeria to train","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26529,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23617\/revisions\/26529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}