What's behind Trump's Christmas Day airstrikes in Nigeria

The United States launched airstrikes in Nigeria against Islamic State militants on Christmas Day after President Donald Trump threatened in November to go into the country "guns-a-blazing" over what he called a "mass slaughter" of Christians.

At Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth's direction, and in coordination with Nigerian authorities, the U.S. military struck "ISIS terrorists" in the country's northwest, according to the U.S. Africa Command.

Trump said on Truth Social that he ordered the military to launch a "powerful and deadly strike against ISIS terrorist scum in Northwest Nigeria who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians."

The military "executed numerous perfect strikes," he said.

Hegseth wrote in an X post that there would be "more to come."

The operation marked the first time the United States has launched deadly strikes in Nigeria as part of its efforts to combat ISIS, or the Islamic State group, in Africa.

The United States struck ISIS targets in Syria Dec. 19 after a gunman with suspected ties to the terrorist group shot and killed two U.S. soldiers stationed in the country and their interpreter.

The strikes backed up threats from Trump beginning in late October over what he called mass killings of Nigerian Christians – an issue long pushed by the right and more recently addressed by Trump. Violence in the country has targeted Christians, but experts say the situation is far more nuanced than how Trump has described it.

Where were the strikes?

According to the U.S. Africa Command, the strikes were in Sokoto State, on the country's northwestern border with Niger.

The United States has not released any further information about how many targets were struck and how many people were killed. The Pentagon referred USA TODAY to the U.S. Africa Command, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nigeria's foreign ministry said that the United States coordinated its strikes with the Nigerian government and that the two countries shared intelligence. Yusuf Tuggar, the country's foreign minister, told CNN he had discussed the strikes in two phone calls with Secretary of State Marco Rubio before the attack.

"We are ready, willing and able to collaborate, coordinate with any foreign government that is committed to the fight against terrorism," Tuggar said. "This is not about religion, this is about Nigerian innocent civilians and the wider region as a whole."

Why is Trump concerned with Nigeria?

Trump first aired concerns about killings of Christians in Nigeria in the fall. On Oct. 31, he designated Nigeria a "country of particular concern," a State Department category for countries implicated in "particularly severe violations of religious freedom."

The next day, he threatened on Truth Social that the United States would cut off aid to Nigeria and could "go into that now disgraced country, 'guns-a-blazing,'" if the government "continues to allow the killing of Christians."

Concern over violence directed specifically against Christians in Nigeria has long circulated among conservative and religious groups. It has been taken up recently by well-known figures including Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, talk show host Bill Maher and rapper Nicki Minaj.

Are Christians really being killed in Nigeria?

Nnamdi Obasi, senior Nigeria adviser to the International Crisis Group, an independent anti-war organization, said security problems in the country were "multifaceted," and Christians aren't the only group at risk.

Both Christians and Muslims, who make up about 60% of Nigeria's population, have been targets of violence, according to Obasi.

Some attacks, like suicide bombings, are indiscriminate, he said. Muslim sites of worship like mosques, prayer grounds and Islamic schools have been destroyed, he said.

"It’s not just a single narrative of the killing of Christians. There are different manifestations of violence in different parts of the country," he said.

The northwest, where the United States said it launched the strikes, is a "heavily Muslim" area, Obasi said. That means the victims of violence, which is largely perpetrated by armed bandits in that region, are also mostly Muslim, he said.

The Islamic State group is present mostly in Nigeria's northeast, Obasi said. In that region, a faction of Boko Haram, another violent extremist group, split off and formed an alliance with other ISIS factions in the Middle East, he said.

A group known as Lakurawa in the northwest was initially brought into the region by locals to help protect against the bandit groups around 2017, but it evolved into an extremist group in the years since, Obasi said.

ISIS in the Sahel Province, or ISSP, has expanded its operations along the border between Niger and Nigeria, including in Sokoto, since the beginning of 2024, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data.

Obasi said a continued U.S. operation specifically directed toward defending Christians could risk "further polarizing the country along religious lines."

"A U.S. military campaign that doubles down on protecting the Christian population will almost certainly be misunderstood by the Muslim population that this is a one-sided response," he said.

What will the strikes do?

Javed Ali, counterterrorism director on the National Security Council during Trump's first term, said airstrikes alone were unlikely to destroy or significantly degrade the Islamic State presence in Nigeria. "It's too big, too dispersed, and Nigeria is a huge country," he said.

"The Jihadist environment in central-west Africa has been entrenched and persistent for decades," said Ali, now an associate professor at the University of Michigan. Although the United States had deployed several hundred troops and intelligence collection capabilities to combat Islamist groups in Africa, there was never a serious effort to launch strikes in Nigeria, he said.

"This is the first time this has happened," he said.

If the strikes are the beginning of a longer operation, other considerations will come into play, such as whether the militant group will try to retaliate against the United States or its troops in the region, Ali said.

"Do we truly understand the very complex ethnic and religious and tribal makeup of a country like Nigeria?" he said. "If we don’t, the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan tell you: The deeper you get involved in these countries, the harder it becomes" to reach an end state.

Where is Nigeria?

Nigeria is on Africa's western coast. Its population is 218.5 million, the largest of any country in Africa.