US strikes targeted ISIS militants, Lakurawa jihadists, Nigeria says

ABUJA - US strikes in Nigeria this week targeted ISIS militants from the Sahel who were in the country to work with the Lakurawa jihadist group and “bandit” gangs, a spokesman for the Nigerian President told AFP news agency on Dec 27.

The exact targets of the strikes, launched overnight from Dec 25 to 26, had been unclear.

Washington and Abuja previously said they targeted ISIS-linked militants, without providing details on which of Nigeria’s myriad armed groups were attacked
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“ISIS, Lakurawa and bandits were targeted,” Mr Daniel Bwala, a spokesman for Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, told AFP on Dec 27

“ISIS found their way through the Sahel to go and assist the Lakurawa and the bandits with supplies and with training,” he said.

The Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) group, a branch of ISIS, is active in neighbouring Niger, as well as Burkina Faso and Mali, where it is fighting a bloody insurgency against the governments of those countries.

While Nigeria has long battled its own, separate jihadist conflict, analysts have been worried about the spread of groups from the Sahel into the west African country.

“The strike was conducted at a location where, historically, you have the bandits and the Lakurawa parading around that axis,” Mr Bwala said.

“The intelligence the US government gathered, also, is that there is a mass movement of ISIS from the Sahel to that part.”

There were casualties, but it was unclear who among those targeted were killed, Mr Bwala added.

The site of the strikes – in Nigeria’s north-west state of Sokoto – has puzzled analysts, since Nigeria’s jihadist insurgency is mostly concentrated in the north-east.

Researchers have recently linked some members of the armed group known as Lakurawa – the main jihadist group located in Sokoto State – to the ISSP.

Other analysts have disputed those links, however, and research on Lakurawa is complicated as the term has been used to describe various armed fighters in the north-west.

Diplomatic spat

In the north-west, the biggest security concern is that from criminal gangs known as “bandits”.

They loot villages, conduct kidnappings for ransom and extort from farmers and artisanal miners across swathes of rural countryside outside of government control.

On Dec 26, Nigeria’s Information Minister Mohammed Idris said the strikes hit “two major Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist enclaves” in Sokoto state’s Tangaza district.

Other villages were hit by what the information minister said was debris from the strikes.

Images from an AFP photographer in Offa, in neighbouring Kwara state, showed crumbled buildings with roofs caved in and belongings scattered among the wreckage.

The strikes – which US President Donald Trump said he pushed back to happen on Christmas Day in order to “give a Christmas present” to the militants – come after a diplomatic spat between Washington and Abuja.

Mr Trump accused Nigeria in October and November of allowing “persecution” and “genocide” against Christians.

The Nigerian government and independent analysts reject that framing of the country’s violence, which has long been used by the US religious right that backs Mr Trump.

The country faces multiple conflicts – from jihadists and bandits to farmer-herder violence and south-eastern separatists – that kill both Christians and Muslims.

On Christmas Eve, a suspected suicide bomber killed at least five people in an attack on a mosque in north-eastern Borno state.

After the strikes, Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar said: “It is a joint operation, and it is not targeting any religion nor simply in the name of one religion or the other.” AFP