The head of US Africa Command said on Thursday that the US pulled some of its forces from Nigeria after a series of joint US-Nigerian operations against ISIS in the northeastern part of the country, which included at least one attack that locals say killed civilians.
“We have withdrawn much of our forces that were just there for that operation,” Gen. Dagvin Anderson, the head of AFRICOM, told reporters, according to AFP.
“But (we) are continuing the partnership that Nigeria has asked for to help continue with the intelligence sharing and the understanding that’s necessary to be able to prosecute these difficult tasks,” Anderson added.
Nigerian Defense Minister Christopher Musa told AFP that the US had deployed a group of combat troops for operations in May, which were pulled out shortly after, but they were separate from the roughly 200 US troops recently sent to the country to help train the Nigerian military.
The US launched at least three days of airstrikes in Nigeria from May 16-18 after sending several hundred troops and MQ-9 Reaper drones to the country, the first known direct US military action since President Trump ordered his first bombing in Nigeria on Christmas Day.
The joint US-Nigerian attacks began with an operation involving US special operations forces that the US and Nigeria claim killed a senior ISIS leader. But that same day, May 16, the village of Metele in Nigeria’s Borno state was hit by a series of airstrikes that killed dozens of civilians, according to a report from Drop Site News.
Zannah Abba Aji, the village head of Metele, told Drop Site that he had gathered the names of 27 civilians, including 12 women and children, who were killed by the airstrikes. The joint US-Nigerian strikes came after the Nigerian government was accused of killing hundreds of civilians in recent airstrikes.
