* FG confirms joint operation, calls it precision hits
The United States has carried out an air strike against ISIL (ISIS) fighters in Sokoto, northwest, Nigeria, US President Donald Trump said.
“Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday evening.
Trump said ISIL fighters had “targeted and viciously” killed “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 said.
The US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), which is responsible for operations in Africa, said in a post on X that the air strike was carried out “at the request of Nigerian authorities” and had killed “multiple ISIS terrorists”.
“Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation,” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media, warning also of “more to come”, without providing details.
In a statement, AFRICOM said the strike occurred in “Soboto state,” an apparent reference to Nigeria’s Sokoto State.
The US military action comes weeks after Trump said he had ordered the Pentagon to begin planning for potential military action in Nigeria following claims of Christian persecution in the country.
Nigeria’s government had dismissed Trump’s assertions, saying armed groups target both Muslim and Christian communities in the country, and US claims that Christians face persecution do not represent a complex security situation and ignore efforts by Nigerian authorities to safeguard religious freedom. 
Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement shortly after Trump announced the US strike, confirming early on Friday that Nigerian authorities were “engaged in structured security cooperation with international partners, including the United States of America, in addressing the persistent threat of terrorism and violent extremism”.
“This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West,” the ministry said.
Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Lagos in Nigeria, said pictures are circulating on social media of missile fragments following a strike outside a village in Sokoto State that did not cause casualties.
“To look at the issue of alleged Christian genocide in Nigeria, Sokoto State is probably the last place many Nigerians would think it’s happening,” Idris said, explaining that the vast majority of the state’s population is Muslim and there had been few if any attacks on Christians in the region that he could recall.
Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi said the threat of US military action in Nigeria had been “percolating for some time”, and Donald Trump had accused Nigeria of not doing enough to protect its Christian community in his first term as president.
“But in the last two months or so, with congressional pressure and the State Department, they declared Nigeria a particular country of concern when it came to the rights of Christians, and we had heard that the US had begun overflight surveillance of Nigeria from an airbase in Accra, in Ghana, over the last several weeks. And now we have this,” Rattansi said.
“On Christmas Day, the Trump administration acts. This will go down very well with Trump’s Christian evangelical base, I am sure,” he said.
Trump issued his attack statement on Christmas Day while he was at his Palm Beach, Florida, Mar-a-Lago Club, where he has been spending the holiday.
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