U.S. PRESIDENT Donald Trump said Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025, that the U.S. military launched a “powerful and deadly” strike against the Islamic State (IS) in northwestern Nigeria.
“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!” Trump said on the social media platform Truth Social.
“The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes,” Trump wrote, vowing that the United States will not allow radical Islamic terrorism to prosper.
The strike came about a week after the United States hit more than 70 suspected IS-linked targets in Syria in retaliation for the killing of two U.S. service members and an interpreter.
On Oct. 31, Trump claimed on Truth Social that thousands of Christians were being killed in Nigeria by “radical Islamists,” declaring the country a “country of particular concern.”
Rejecting Trump’s claims
The Nigerian government immediately rejected Trump’s claims, saying the accusations “do not reflect the situation on the ground” and vowing to fight terrorism. Trump later accused the Nigerian government of not doing enough to prevent the killing of Christians.
In a Nov. 1 post, Trump threatened that U.S. forces “may very well go into” Nigeria to “completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.”
Days later, the Economic Community of West African States described Trump’s allegations that terrorist attacks in Nigeria were targeted at Christians as “false and dangerous,” expressing solidarity with the region’s most populous country.
Nigeria, with a population of more than 230 million, is divided roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims. Muslims predominate in the north, where violence against Christians has escalated over the past decade as Islamist extremist groups such as Boko Haram expanded their influence, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank.
Founded in northeastern Nigeria in 2002, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to the self-proclaimed Islamic State in 2015 and rebranded itself as the Islamic State in the West African Province. The group consolidated control over parts of northeastern Nigeria and neighboring Niger beginning in 2021. / XINHUA