President Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social on Saturday that a US-Nigerian military operation that day killed a senior ISIS leader, a joint attack that comes as the Nigerian government has been accused of killing hundreds of civilians in recent airstrikes.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” the president wrote.
“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump added.
Users on social media noted that the Nigerian government claimed to kill an ISIS fighter with the same name in 2024, leading the Nigerian military to issue a statement insisting he was killed on Saturday.
“It is important to state that within the North East region and across the Lake Chad Basin, the use of similar or identical names, aliases and nom de guerres is common among ISWAP and Boko Haram terrorists,” Nigeria’s Defense Headquarters said. “The Abu-Bilal al-Minuki eliminated on 16 May, 2026, has been positively identified … There is therefore no ambiguity in his identity.”
US officials told The New York Times that al-Minuki was killed by an attack on two small islands in Lake Chad, a large freshwater body of water located where Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon converge. The US officials said that about two dozen US and Nigerian commandos attacked al-Minuki and about three dozen fighters. After a three-hour battle, the officials said al-Minuki was killed by a US airstrike on one of the islands.
The attack marks the first known US airstrike in the country since Trump ordered strikes on Christmas Day, which were said to target ISIS fighters in northwestern Nigeria, though US Tomahawk missiles fell on two villages far from the intended target. Since then, the US has deployed troops to Nigeria and increased support for the Nigerian government’s operations against Boko Haram and the ISIS affiliate (ISWAP).
Since the US support has increased, there have been several incidents involving major civilian casualties. The latest such strike occurred on Sunday, May 10, when Amnesty International’s Nigeria office said that over 100 civilians were killed by airstrikes on a market in northwestern Nigeria. For its part, the government acknowledged it launched a strike in the area but claimed no civilians were harmed.
