United States (US) President Donald Trump \u200csaid on Friday that Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, was killed in an operation conducted by US and Nigerian forces.<\/p>\n
It was a strike that Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described as “a significant \u200bexample of effective collaboration in the fight against terrorism.”<\/p>\n
“Tonight, at my direction, brave \u200bAmerican forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously \u2060planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from \u200bthe battlefield. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in \u200bAfrica, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump said on Truth Social, without disclosing the exact location of the operation.<\/p>\n
In a statement posted on X, opens new tab, \u200bTinubu said early assessments confirmed the elimination of al-Minuki also known as Abu-Mainok along \u200bwith several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.<\/p>\n
Tinubu said Nigerian \u200cforces \u2060worked closely with their US counterparts in what he called a daring joint operation that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State.<\/p>\n
Al-Minuki, a Nigerian national, was designated a “specially designated global terrorist” by the Biden administration in 2023, according to the US \u200bFederal Register.<\/p>\n
Trump, who has \u200bpreviously accused Nigeria of \u2060failing to protect Christians from Islamist militants in the northwest, thanked the Nigerian government for its partnership in the operation.<\/p>\n
Nigeria denies discriminating \u200bagainst any religion, saying its security forces target armed groups that \u200battack both Christians \u2060and Muslims.<\/p>\n
The US carried out strikes targeting Islamic State-linked militants in Nigeria in December. Since then, Washington has deployed drones and 200 troops to provide training and intelligence support to the \u2060Nigerian military \u200bagainst Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked insurgencies that are \u200bspreading across West Africa.<\/p>\n
The US forces were operating in a strictly non-combat role, Nigerian military officials said earlier \u200bthis year.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21260,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-34635","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Nigeria denies discriminating \u200bagainst any religion.","published_date":"","news_description":"Nigeria denies discriminating \u200bagainst any religion.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34635","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\/34635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34636,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/34635\/revisions\/34636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=34635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}