U.S. and Nigerian forces killed a leader of the Islamic State group in Nigeria in a mission carried out Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump said.
Trump announced the joint operation in Africa’s most populous country in a late-night social media post. He said Abu Bakr al-Mainuki was second-in-command of the Islamic State group globally and “thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing.”
Mr. al-Mainuki was viewed as the key figure in IS organizing and finance, and had been plotting attacks against the United States and its interests, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share sensitive information.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu confirmed the operation and said Mr. 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 by both countries since their new security partnership that kicked off last year after Mr. Trump claimed Christians were being targeted in Nigeria’s security crisis and threatened U.S. military intervention. Residents and security analysts have said Nigeria’s security crisis affects both Christians, predominant in the south, and Muslims, who are the majority in the north.
According to the spokesperson for the Nigerian military task force that carried out the Friday operation, the mission was a “highly complex precision air-land operation” and was carried out during three hours of darkness early Saturday without any casualties or loss of assets.
“His elimination represents the single most consequential counterterrorism outcome” in the region since the inception of the operation in 2015, Sani Uba, the spokesperson for the task force, said in a statement.
United Nations experts in their latest report said IS had intensified efforts in West Africa, citing more than 500 attacks between January and October last year.
Questions over al-Mainuki’s exact status in IS
Born in Nigeria’s Borno province in 1982, Mr. al-Mainuki took the helm of the IS branch in West Africa after his predecessor, Mamman Nur, was killed in 2018, according to the Counter Extremism Project, which tracks militant groups.
Mr. al-Mainuki was based in the Sahel area, the monitoring group said, adding that it is believed that he fought in Libya when IS was active in the North African nation more than a decade ago. He was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2023.
Mr. Trump, in his social media announcement, said Mr. al-Mainuki was “second in command globally,” hiding in Africa, a claim that some analysts say is off the mark. The Nigerian military, in a statement, also said intelligence shows that earlier this year, Mr. al-Mainuki might have been “elevated to the position of Head of the General Directorate of States, placing him the second most senior leader within the ISIS global hierarchy.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said Mr. al-Mainuki was the senior ISIS General Directorate of Provinces Emir – “the number two for ISIS globally – responsible for overseeing the planning of attacks, directing the hostage-taking and managing financial operations.”
There is no way to verify his position within IS independently. Analysts say Mr. al-Mainuki was the deputy to Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the leader of the Islamic State West African Province who was reported to have died in 2021. He is regarded as one of the central proponents of the formation of ISWAP, after its split with Boko Haram in 2016.
“If confirmed, the killing of al-Mainuki is huge because this is the first time a security agency has killed someone this high in the ranking of ISWAP,” Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa who specializes in insurgent groups in Nigeria, said.
“The potential to cause chaos within the group is also there because the operation must have been carried out in the heart of ISWAP’s fortified base, which is very difficult to access.”
Trump in December directed U.S. forces to launch strikes against the Islamic State group in Nigeria, though he released little detail then about the impact.
US and Nigeria step up joint operations
The Nigerian military said the operation was a result of recently formed U.S.-Nigeria partnership and intelligence-sharing efforts. Samalia Uba, the military spokesperson, said in a statement that the operation has also “disrupted a violent terrorist network that endangered Nigeria and the broader West African region.”
Nigeria has been battling multiple armed groups, including at least two affiliated with IS, as it has grappled with a multifaceted security crisis. IS affiliates in Africa have emerged as some of the continent’s most active militant groups following the collapse of the so-called IS caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2017.
The U.S. in February sent troops to the West African nation to help advise its military, and in March, the U.S. also deployed drones there after Trump’s allegations about Christians being targeted in Nigeria.
The Friday night operation was the latest instance in a string of covert missions abroad that Mr. Trump has announced this year, starting with the stunning overnight raid in January to capture and remove Venezuela’s then-leader Nicolás Maduro and whisk him to the U.S., followed nearly two months later by the launch of strikes that kicked off the war with Iran.
This story was reported by the Associated Press.
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.