Trump says Islamic State group leader killed in joint US-Nigerian mission – National
American and Nigerian soldiers killed the leader of the Islamic State group in Nigeria in an operation carried out on Friday, US President Donald Trump said.
Trump announced this joint operation in Africa’s most populous country in a late night social media post. He said that Abu Bakr al-Mainuki is the second in command of the Islamic State group in the world and “he thought that he could hide in Africa, but he did not know that we had sources that informed us about what he was doing.”
Al-Mainuki is considered a key figure in IS’s operations and finances, and was planning to attack the United States and its interests, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share sensitive information.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu confirmed the operation and said Al-Mainuki was killed along with “several of his bodyguards, during a strike at his base in the Lake Chad Basin.”
The partnership is the latest for both countries since their new security partnership began last year after Trump said Christians were being targeted in Nigeria’s security crisis and threatened US military intervention. Residents and security analysts say Nigeria’s security crisis affects both Christians, who are predominantly in the south, and Muslims, who are the majority in the north.
According to a spokesman for the Nigerian military that carried out the operation on Friday, the operation was “a very difficult precision air operation” and was carried out during the darkness of three hours early Saturday without any injuries or loss of property.
“His elimination represents one result of the fight against terrorism” in the region since the operation began in 2015, Sani Uba, the spokesperson of the task force, said in a statement.
Get the latest country news
Get the best Canadian news delivered to your inbox as it happens so you never miss a trending story.
United Nations experts in their latest report said that IS has intensified its efforts in West Africa, counting more than 500 attacks between January and October last year.
Questions about Al-Mainuki’s exact status in IS
Born in Nigeria’s Borno state in 1982, al-Mainuki took over the IS branch in West Africa after his predecessor, Mamman Nur, was killed in 2018, according to the Counter Extremism Project, which tracks terrorist groups.
Al-Mainuki is based in the Sahel region, the monitoring group said, adding that he is believed to have fought in Libya when IS was active in the North African country more than a decade ago. He was sentenced by the US in 2023.
Trump, in his announcement on social media, said Al-Mainuki is “the second in the world,” hiding in Africa, a claim some analysts say is off the mark. The Nigerian military, in a statement, also said that intelligence shows that earlier this year, Al-Mainuki may have been “elevated to the position of Head of the General Directorate of Nations, placing him as the second-largest leader in the ISIS global empire.”
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also said that Al-Mainuki was ISIS’s Director General of the provinces Emir – “the number two of ISIS worldwide – responsible for overseeing the planning of attacks, directing hostages and managing financial operations.”
There is no way to independently verify his position within IS. Analysts say Al-Mainuki was the deputy of Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the leader of the Islamic State West African Province who was reported to have died in 2021. He is regarded as one of the main supporters of the establishment of ISWAP, after its split from Boko Haram in 2016.
“If confirmed, the killing of Al-Mainuki is huge because it is the first time that a security agency has killed someone this high in the ranks of ISWAP,” said Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at Good Governance Africa who focuses on rebel groups in Nigeria.
“The power to create chaos in the party is also there because this work must have been done in the heart of ISWAP’s strong base, which is very difficult to reach.”
Trump in December ordered the US military to begin strikes against the Islamic State group in Nigeria, although he released few details at the time about the impact.
The US and Nigeria are strengthening cooperation
The Nigerian military said the operation was a result of newly established US-Nigerian cooperation and intelligence sharing efforts. Samalia Uba, a spokesperson for the military, said in a statement that the operation “has also disrupted the terrorist network that threatens Nigeria and the West African region.”
Nigeria has been battling multiple armed groups, including at least two affiliated with IS, as it faces a multifaceted security crisis. IS affiliates in Africa emerged as other rebel groups in the continent following the fall of the so-called IS caliphate in Syria and Iraq in 2017.
The US in February sent troops to the West African nation to help its soldiers, and in March, the US sent drones there again after Trump’s accusations about Christians targeting Nigeria.
Friday night’s operation was the latest in a series of covert operations abroad that Trump has announced this year, beginning with a surprise overnight raid in January to capture and remove former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and bring him to the US, followed nearly two months later by the launch of strikes that started a war with Iran.
© 2026 The Canadian Press
