Nigeria on Friday signaled that more strikes against terrorist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country, which it said was a joint operation with its military.<\/p>\n
The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises, with terrorists waging an insurgency in the northeast since 2009 and armed \u201cbandit\u201d gangs raiding villages and staging kidnappings in the northwest.<\/p>\n
The strikes came after Abuja and Washington were locked in a diplomatic dispute over what US President Donald Trump has characterised as the mass killing of Christians amid Nigeria\u2019s myriad armed conflicts.<\/p>\n
A Pentagon official told AFP that \u201cthe Department of War worked with the government of Nigeria to carry out these strikes\u201d and that they \u201cwere approved by the government of Nigeria\u201d, without saying whether Nigeria\u2019s military had been involved.<\/p>\n
US defence officials later posted a video of what appeared to be a nighttime missile launch from the deck of a battleship flying the US flag.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Nigeria\u2019s military said in a statement that its forces, \u201cin conjunction with the United States\u201d, had conducted \u201cprecision strike operations\u201d.<\/p>\n
Both countries said the strikes targeted militants linked to the Islamic State group, without providing details.<\/p>\n
Washington\u2019s framing of the violence in Nigeria as amounting to Christian \u201cpersecution\u201d is rejected by the Nigerian government and independent analysts, but has nonetheless resulted in increased security coordination.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Nigeria that provided the intelligence,\u201d the country\u2019s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, told broadcaster Channels TV, saying he was on the phone with US State Secretary Marco Rubio ahead of the bombardment.<\/p>\n
Asked if there would be more strikes, Tuggar said: \u201cIt is an ongoing thing, and we are working with the US. We are working with other countries as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Targets unclear
\nThe Department of War\u2019s US Africa Command said \u201cmultiple ISIS terrorists\u201d were killed in an attack in the northwestern state of Sokoto.<\/p>\n
Residents in the far-flung villages of that state told AFP they were shocked by the blasts. The strikes hit multiple locations, including a town that residents said was not a militant stronghold.<\/p>\n
Which of Nigeria\u2019s myriad, and well-documented, armed groups were targeted remains unclear.<\/p>\n
Nigeria\u2019s terrorist groups are mostly concentrated in the northeast, but have made inroads into the northwest.<\/p>\n
Researchers have recently linked some members of an armed group known as Lakurawa \u2014 the main terrorist group located in Sokoto State \u2014 to Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), which is mostly active in neighbouring Niger and Mali.<\/p>\n
Other analysts have disputed those links, and research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the northwest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe initially thought it was (an) attack by Lakurawa,\u201d said Haruna Kallah, a resident of Jabo town.<\/p>\n
That the explosions were in fact the result of a US strike \u201csurprised us because this area has never been a Lakurawa enclave, and we have never had any attacks in the last two years.\u201d Tukur Shehu, a resident of Tangaza, a neighbouring district, said two strikes targeted Warriya and Alkassim villages \u2014 known to house Lakurawa camps, from where they launch attacks and keep hostages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria on Friday signaled that more strikes against terrorist groups were expected after a Christmas Day bombardment by US forces against militants in the north of the country, which it said was a joint operation with its military. The west African country faces multiple interlinked security crises, with terrorists waging an insurgency in the northeast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14579,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14580,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14578\/revisions\/14580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}