U.S. and Nigerian forces have escalated their counterterrorism campaign in northeastern Nigeria with a second wave of airstrikes targeting Daesh terrorists in the Lake Chad Basin, following a high-profile joint operation that killed one of the group's senior commanders, U.S. Africa Command said Monday.
The latest strikes, carried out on Sunday, hit what AFRICOM described as confirmed terrorist positions linked to Daesh West Africa Province.
Officials said the targets were identified through prior intelligence and surveillance, and that initial assessments showed no casualties among U.S. or Nigerian personnel. Battle damage evaluations are still in progress, leaving the full impact of the strikes unclear.
The action follows a major coordinated operation conducted days earlier, around May 16, when U.S. and Nigerian forces struck a fortified compound in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, an area long regarded as the epicenter of jihadist activity in the country.
That raid killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, described by U.S. officials as the global second-in-command of Daesh and a key architect of external operations. Intelligence assessments linked him to planning attacks, managing financial networks, overseeing weapons supply chains and coordinating propaganda efforts across multiple regions.
