American and Nigerian forces killed the Islamic State’s director of global operations in a Friday evening operation, U.S. African Command said.
The joint operation killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, according to President Donald Trump, who announced the mission and al-Minuki’s death in a social media post Friday night. Trump described al-Minuki as ISIS’s “second in command” globally. The strike was the largest U.S. operation in Nigeria since Christmas, when U.S. forces fired multiple missiles at militants in Nigeria’s northwestern Sokoto state.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said in his own statement that the attack killed al-Minuki and “several of his lieutenants” and that it occurred in the Lake Chad Basin.
U.S. Africa Command, in a statement on Saturday, described al-Minuki as “the director of global operations for ISIS.” According to AFRICOM, the operations also killed “other senior ISIS leaders.” Aerial video shared by AFRICOM on social media shows some ground fighting before several air strikes hit the area. It’s not clear how many Nigerian or American forces participated in the operation or how many ISIS members were killed.
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al-Minuki had been under U.S. sanctions since 2023, for ties to ISIS in Nigeria. Also known as Abubakar Maniok, AFRICOM described him as “the most active terrorist in the world,” who helped plan ISIS attacks and financial operations.
Friday’s attack is the latest escalation in six months of increased U.S. involvement in Nigeria. Trump had repeatedly accused the Nigerian government of not stopping what he said was widespread violence against the country’s Christians and threatened military action. On Christmas, Navy ships fired multiple missiles into Sokoto state. The attack targeted ISIS camps in the area, AFRICOM said at the time. In February, the U.S. military moved to deploy roughly 100 troops to the country to train its military. The American troops were sent specifically to help “identify and neutralize extremist terrorist groups.”
The expanded operations in Nigeria come as the United States continues an ongoing campaign against ISIS in Africa. American forces have repeatedly carried out strikes targeting ISIS’s Somalia affiliate in recent months, as part of a wider and escalating air war in the country.
