With airstrike in Nigeria, Trump inserts U.S. into long-running turmoil

Top Nigerian officials said Friday that U.S. attacks in the country on what President Donald Trump called “ISIS Terrorist Scum” could mark the opening salvo in a campaign against militant groups there. But security analysts warned that Trump administration officials appeared to be stepping into a complex, long-running conflict that they might not fully understand.

Trump has in recent months repeatedly warned that he would intervene in Nigeria — which is afflicted by widespread violence — if the killing of Christians does not stop. He made good on that promise Thursday, announcing “numerous perfect strikes” on Christmas night and promising more if the “slaughter of Christians continues.”

Western and Nigerian security analysts said the attacks marked the first time in decades that the United States had launched such strikes in Nigeria, a country of more than 230 million people split about equally between Muslims and Christians. The analysts said that violence, particularly by Islamist militants in the north, has sometimes targeted Christians but that Muslims have also been affected.

Neither Trump nor the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) specified who was killed in the strikes, which the U.S. and Nigeria’s government said were conducted with the approval of Nigeria’s government. Daniel Bwala, an adviser to Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, said the strikes on Thursday marked only the beginning. Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Tuggar told Nigerian broadcaster Channels Television that his country provided intelligence to the U.S. for the strikes and that cooperation was ongoing.

“There will be more, I can assure you of that,” he told The Washington Post in an interview Friday. “This is part of our struggle against insecurity. The operation is going to be an ongoing joint effort at fighting terrorism in Nigeria until we dismantle their cells in Nigeria and around our borders.”

Two U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation, said the strikes were conducted with Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a Navy vessel. The use of the Tomahawks, which have a range of about 1,000 miles, underscores the difficulties faced by the U.S. in maintaining a counterterrorism presence within the Sahel, a region that stretches across the breadth of Africa and has in recent years become the world’s epicenter for Islamist extremism. The U.S. presence in the Sahel has in recent years shrunk, and the presence of Russian mercenaries has grown.

In Nigeria, the violence is multifaceted and varies by region. In the northeast, militants from the Boko Haram militant group and the Islamic State faction are active; in the northwest, bandits — some with links to Islamist groups — predominate; and in central Nigeria, conflicts between farmers and herders are rampant.

Much of the recent violence in Sokoto State — a majority Muslim area where the U.S. officials said the strikes took place — is attributable to a group called Lakurawa, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). Some analysts, including those with ACLED, link that group to the Islamic State, while others say Lakurawa is affiliated with the rival al-Qaida affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).

Aneliese Bernard, a former State Department adviser who now runs a private consulting firm working in West Africa, said that even if Lakurawa militants were hit Thursday, it is unlikely they were high-ranking, based on the location of the strikes.

Still, Bernard said the strikes mark “a significant escalation of U.S. military activity in Africa,” noting that the U.S. did not take similar action even at the height of Boko Haram’s offensive in the Lake Chad region of Nigeria in the mid-2010s.

She and other analysts said that U.S. officials seem more focused on their preferred narrative in Washington than on the complex reality on the ground. Trump’s focus on Nigeria had been the result of a monthslong pressure campaign on behalf of Nigerian Christians by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and American evangelical leaders, The Post previously reported. But the president’s Nov. 1 threat to go into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” surprised even those who had been pressing the issue.

Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst for ACLED, said he has briefed multiple U.S. officials in recent weeks on violence in Nigeria, emphasizing that the number of Christians killed has often been inflated. “The nuances have been lost, and what I fear that could mean for the population is a high risk of civilian casualties,” he said.

The strikes, he added, were the first of their kind in Nigeria since ACLED began recording data but are part of a “rapid escalation” of U.S. airstrikes globally this year, with ACLED recording more air and drone strikes in 2025 than in the previous four years combined.

Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa who has been studying Islamist militants for more than a decade, said that in Sokoto State and elsewhere in northern Nigeria, extremists are increasingly imposing draconian versions of Islamist law, for instance requiring residents to adhere to conservative dress codes and delete music from their phones.

That meant that many Nigerians would welcome the U.S. intervention, thinking their own government has done too little to resist the militants. But he said Trump’s approach to addressing violence has been misguided. The president’s focus on the killing of Christians — which Trump last month called a “genocide” — was inaccurate, Samuel said, and his claim that ISIS militants were struck is dubious.

“It’s politically convenient,” said Mustapha Alhassan, a security analyst who has worked extensively in northwest Nigeria, referring to Trump’s framing of the strikes.

“Nigerians would welcome the help if it was hitting precise targets,” he said. “But that doesn’t seem to be what is happening. All of this is to what end?”

James Barnett, a Nigeria specialist based between Lagos and Britain, said that much remains uncertain about the effect of the strikes and the future of military cooperation between the United States and Nigeria.

“If this is the start of a shift in U.S. policy toward Nigeria, there are a lot of potential challenges and risks, including in terms of how these operations are framed,” Barnett said. “The symbolism of Christmas is hard to miss … there is a clear political angle to it.”

He said it was significant, though unsurprising, that it was Trump, rather than Nigerian officials, who first announced the strikes. Historically, he noted, Nigeria’s government has not welcomed U.S. strikes because of concerns about the country’s sovereignty.

In the typically quiet village of Jabo in northwest Nigeria, three residents said in interviews Friday they were left confused by a strike in their area, which they said had not been especially affected by violence.

“We don’t have any bandits’ camp near our area,” Sama’ila Mustapha said.

He recounted seeing a light and then hearing a loud bang late on Thursday night. Mustapha said he then followed a crowd of people to an onion field just outside of town near a hospital. He and two other residents said there were no casualties.

“We thought it’s a missile or an aircraft,” said another resident, Abdulrahman Mainasara. “God was so kind it landed on the outskirts, in an open place.”

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• Jamiu reported from Abuja.