The United States has carried out strikes against militants associated with the Islamic State group (IS) in northwest Nigeria where militants have attempted to establish a presence.<\/p>\n
The US military sources said, the group’s camps in Sokoto state which is on Nigeria’s border with Niger, were attacked, and a “initial assessment” indicated “multiple” fatalities.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump said, the gang was “terrorist scum” and had been “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians” during the “deadly” Christmas Day strikes.<\/p>\n
Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, the foreign minister of Nigeria, told the British Media BBC that it had “nothing to do with a particular religion” and was a “joint operation”.<\/p>\n
Tuggar claimed that Nigerian information had been used “for quite some time” to arrange the strikes. Additionally, he did not rule out more strikes.<\/p>\n
He said that the strikes, which occurred late on Thursday, had “nothing to do with Christmas, it could be any other day – it is to do with attacking terrorists who have been killing Nigerians.”<\/p>\n
Boko Haram and IS-affiliated groups are among the several jihadist organizations that the Nigerian government has been battling for years, mostly in the northeast, hundreds of miles from Sokoto state.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has previously said that a “genocide” is taking place and accused the Nigerian government of failing to shield Christians from Islamist attacks.<\/p>\n
Nigeria has been designated a “country of particular concern” by Trump. The US State Department uses this classification to impose penalties on nations that are “engaged in severe violations of religious freedom”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States has carried out strikes against militants associated with the Islamic State group (IS) in northwest Nigeria where militants have attempted to establish a presence. The US military sources said, the group’s camps in Sokoto state which is on Nigeria’s border with Niger, were attacked, and a “initial assessment” indicated “multiple” fatalities. US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":968,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,38],"tags":[133,134,135,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest","8":"category-world","9":"tag-nigeria","10":"tag-sokoto","11":"tag-strikes","12":"tag-us-military"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n