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US and Nigerian forces killed a leader of Daesh group in Nigeria in a mission carried out on Friday, 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 Daesh 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.”
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 authorised to share sensitive information.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu confirmed the operation and said 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 Trump claimed Christians were being targeted in Nigeria’s security crisis and threatened US 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.
Born in Nigeria’s Borno province in 1982, Al Mainuki took the helm of Daesh branch in West Africa after the group’s previous leader in the region, Mamman Nur, was killed in 2018, according to the Counter Extremism Project, which tracks militant groups.
Al Mainuki was based in the Sahel area, the monitoring group said, adding that it is believed that he fought in Libya when Daesh was active in the North African nation more than a decade ago. He was sanctioned by the US in 2023.
Trump, in his social media announcement, said 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, 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 Daesh global hierarchy.”
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also said Al Mainuki was the senior Daesh General Directorate of Provinces Emir — “the number two for Daesh 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 Daesh independently.
Analysts say Al Mainuki was the deputy to Abu Musab Al Barnawi, the leader of Daesh West African Province who was reported to have died in 2021.
“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.”
The Friday night operation was the latest instance in a string of covert missions abroad that 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 US, followed nearly two months later by the launch of strikes that kicked off the war with Iran.
Associated Press
