Very little information has been shared about strikes in Sokoto state
Two weeks after the US carried out Christmas Day airstrikes in north-west Nigeria on what it described as Islamic State fighters, questions remain over the specific group that was targeted and the operation’s impact.
In the aftermath of the strikes, Donald Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform that “ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians” were hit with “numerous perfect strikes”.
The operation, coordinated with Nigeria, targeted an Islamist group known as Lakurawa, which extorts the mainly Muslim local population and enforces a strict version of sharia law that includes lashes for listening to music.
Very little information has been shared by either the US or Nigeria about the strikes’ impact and it is unclear how many Lakurawa fighters, if any, died. The US Africa Command branch of the US military said on 25 December that its “initial assessment is that multiple Isis terrorists were killed in the Isis camps”.
