Washington DC: US President Donald Trump on Friday announced that American forces, working alongside the Nigerian Armed Forces, had carried out a joint military operation that killed a senior ISIS leader in Africa.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the operation targeted Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he described as the “second in command of ISIS globally” and one of the world’s most active terrorists.
According to Trump, the mission was conducted under his direction and involved a “meticulously planned and very complex” operation aimed at eliminating the militant leader from the battlefield.
Trump claimed al-Minuki had been hiding in Africa and said intelligence sources helped track his activities. He added that the ISIS leader had allegedly been involved in planning attacks targeting Americans and terrorizing people across the African continent.
“With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” Trump wrote, while thanking the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.
The US president also praised American and Nigerian forces for executing the operation successfully.
Neither the White House nor Nigerian authorities immediately released further operational details, including the location or timing of the strike. Independent verification of Trump’s claims was not immediately available.
ISIS and its affiliated groups have maintained a presence in several parts of Africa in recent years, particularly in the Sahel region and around the Lake Chad Basin, where extremist violence has continued despite multinational counterterrorism efforts.
