US, Nigerian mission kills Islamic State leader, Trump says

WASHINGTON — U.S. and Nigerian forces killed an Islamic State group leader in Nigeria during a mission Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said.

Trump announced the joint operation in Africa’s most populous country in a late post on social media. He said Abu Bakr al-Mainuki was the Islamic State group’s second-in-command globally and “thought he might be hiding in Africa, but he didn’t know we had sources keeping us informed about what he was doing.”

Al-Mainuki was considered the key figure in organizing and financing ISIS and was planning attacks against the United States and its interests, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share sensitive information.

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu confirmed the operation and said Al-Mainuki was killed alongside “several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.”

The joint operation is the latest carried out by the two countries since their new security partnership which began last year after Trump claimed that Christians were the target of Nigeria’s security crisis and threatened US military intervention. Residents and security analysts said Nigeria’s security crisis affects both Christians, the majority in the south, and Muslims, the majority in the north.

According to the spokesperson for the Nigerian military task force that led Friday’s operation, the mission was a “very complex precision air-land operation” and took place during three hours of darkness early Saturday without any casualties or loss of property.

“Its elimination represents the most significant counterterrorism outcome” in the region since the operation began in 2015, Sani Uba, a spokesperson for the task force, said in a statement.

Born in Nigeria’s Borno province in 1982, al-Mainuki took over as head of ISIS’s West Africa branch after the group’s former leader in the region, Mamman Nur, was killed in 2018, according to the Counter Extremism Project, which tracks militant groups.

Al-Mainuki was based in the Sahel region, the monitoring group said, adding that it appears he fought in Libya when ISIS was active in the North African country more than a decade ago. It was sanctioned by the United States in 2023.

Questions about Al-Mainuki’s exact status within IS

Trump, in his social media announcement, said Al-Mainuki was “second in command globally,” hiding in Africa, a claim that some analysts say is irrelevant. The Nigerian military, in a statement, also said intelligence shows that earlier this year, Al-Mainuki could have been “elevated to the position of head of the Directorate General of States, which would place him as the second most senior leader in the global IS hierarchy.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also said Al-Mainuki was the senior emir of ISIS’s provincial headquarters – “ISIS’s number two in the world – responsible for overseeing attack planning, directing hostage-taking and managing financial operations.”

There is no way to independently verify his position within IS. Analysts say Al-Mainuki was the deputy of Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the head of the Islamic State’s West Africa province, who died in 2021. He is considered one of the main supporters of the formation of ISWAP, after its split with Boko Haram in 2016.

“If confirmed, the killing of Al-Mainuki is huge because it is the first time a security agency has killed someone so senior in ISWAP,” said Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa specializing in insurgent groups in Nigeria.

“The risk of causing chaos within the group also exists because the operation had to be carried out in the heart of the fortified ISWAP base, which is very difficult to access.”

In December, Trump ordered U.S. forces to launch strikes against the Islamic State group in Nigeria, although he then gave few details about the impact.

US and Nigeria step up joint operations

The Nigerian military said the operation was the result of a recently formed partnership and intelligence sharing between the United States and Nigeria. Samalia Uba, a military spokesperson, said in a statement that the operation also “disrupted a violent terrorist network that endangers Nigeria and the entire West African region.”

Nigeria is battling several armed groups, including at least two affiliated with ISIS, as it grapples with a multifaceted security crisis. ISIS-affiliated groups in Africa became among the most active militant groups on the continent following the collapse of the so-called ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2017.

In February, the United States sent troops to the West African country to help advise its military, and in March it also deployed drones there after Trump’s allegations that Christians were being targeted in Nigeria.

Friday night’s operation was the latest example in a series of covert overseas missions announced by Trump this year, beginning with the stunning nighttime raid in January to capture and expel Nicolás Maduro, then Venezuela’s leader, and take him to the United States, followed nearly two months later by launching strikes that sparked war with Iran.

Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria. Associated Press writers Dyepkazah Shibayan in Abuja, Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.

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