‘More to come’: US signals expanded strikes on ISIS in Nigeria as Abuja talks of ‘joint ongoing ops’

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth warned of further strikes against Islamic State targets in north-western Nigeria, hours after the US military carried out attacks on militant camps, moves that Donald Trump said were aimed at stopping the killing of Christians.

“The president was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end. The [Pentagon] is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight – on Christmas. More to come …," Hegseth wrote on X.

“Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation. Merry Christmas!” he added.

Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar said on Friday that the US strikes were “part of joint ongoing operations,” following a period of diplomatic tension sparked by President Donald Trump’s accusations that Nigeria had failed to protect Christians.

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Nigeria, which is officially secular and has a population that is nearly evenly divided between Muslims (53%) and Christians (45%), has rejected claims of religious persecution. While violence against Christians has drawn attention from the US religious right, Nigerian authorities have said armed groups target both Christians and Muslims.

Tuggar told Channels Television that Nigeria provided the intelligence for the airstrikes carried out in Sokoto state. He said he spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for 19 minutes before the strikes, then sought approval from President Bola Tinubu, before holding a further five-minute call with Rubio.

“We have been working closely with the Americans,” The Guardian quoted Tuggar as saying.

“This is what we’ve always been hoping for, to work with the Americans, to work with other countries, to combat terrorism, to stop the death of innocent Nigerians … It’s a collaborative effort,” Tuggar added.

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The US military’s Africa Command (Africom) said the strikes in Sokoto state had been carried out in coordination with Nigerian authorities. An earlier Africom statement posted on X and then removed said they had been conducted at the request of Nigerian authorities.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Thursday: “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!

“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was. The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.”

Neither the US nor Nigerian authorities have said whether the airstrikes caused any deaths.

Asked if further strikes were planned, Tuggar said, “You can call it a new phase of an old conflict. For us it is something that is ongoing.”

Panic and confusion among residents

Residents of Jabo village in Sokoto, where the strike hit, described panic and confusion as missiles landed.

“As it approached our area, the heat became intense,” Abubakar Sani told the Associated Press. “The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before.”

Farmer Sanusi Madabo said the sky glowed bright red for hours. “It was almost like daytime,” he said, adding that he only later learned it was a US airstrike.

US aircraft had conducted surveillance flights over the region earlier this month, reportedly operating from an airport in neighbouring Ghana.

Sokoto’s forests, which border Niger, have long served as hideouts for armed bandits and Islamic State–Sahel Province (ISSP) fighters, locally known as Lakurawa. Analysts say the group emerged after herders banded together to combat banditry amid weak state presence.

Violence in Nigeria’s north has often been framed along religious lines, but experts say clashes between Muslim herders and predominantly Christian farming communities are rooted largely in competition over land and water. Kidnappings of priests and pastors have increased, though analysts attribute this mainly to criminal motives rather than religious targeting.

Tuggar said the operation was aimed at “protecting Nigerians and innocent lives,” stressing that it was not religiously motivated.

“The president emphasised yesterday, before he gave it the go-ahead, that it must be made clear that … it is a joint operation,” he said. “It is not targeting any religion, nor is it simply in the name of one religion or another.”

The strikes came a day after a Christmas Eve suicide bombing at a mosque in northeast Nigeria killed at least five people and wounded more than 30 others. The military blamed the attack on Boko Haram, which has waged a nearly two-decade insurgency largely separate from violence in the northwest.

Nigeria recorded nearly 6,000 violent incidents in 2025, about half of them targeting civilians, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED). Katsina state reported the highest number of incidents at 706, while Sokoto ranked fourth with 353.

Trump, who campaigned in 2024 as the “candidate of peace” and pledged to end “endless wars,” has overseen multiple overseas military interventions in the first year of his second term, including strikes in Yemen, Iran and Syria, alongside a major military buildup in the Caribbean targeting Venezuela.

With inputs from agencies