“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” said President Donald Trump in a Christmas Truth Social post.
ISIS, which stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham, is described by the U.S. government’s counter-terrorism guide as “a Salafi-jihadist group that has conducted or inspired thousands of terrorist attacks worldwide, killing and injuring tens of thousands of people.” As of this year, the guide also identified the group as a “global enterprise” that oversees “at least 15 branches and networks in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.”
In Nigeria, the Islamic State in the West African Province (ISWAP) established control of the northeastern part of the country in recent years, per the Council on Foreign Relations Global Conflict Tracker. ISWAP was added to the ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions List in 2020, according to the United Nations.
Trump said in his Dec. 25 post that ISIS had been “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!”
“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was,” Trump added. “The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing. Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”
Earlier this month, Trump pledged that there would be “very serious retaliation,” after the deaths of U.S. servicemembers in Syria during a reported ISIS attack.