US President Donald Trump said on Friday that a US military strike targeting Islamic State militants in Nigeria was originally supposed to take place on Wednesday but he ordered it delayed by a day.
“They were going to do it earlier,” Trump told Politico in an interview. “And I said, ‘nope, let’s give a Christmas present’. … They didn’t think that was coming but we hit them hard. Every camp got decimated.”
Thursday’s strikes marked a major escalation in an offensive that the West African country’s overstretched military has struggled with for years.
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Trump had said on social media that the “powerful and deadly” strikes in the state of Sokoto were carried out against Islamic State gunmen who were “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians”.
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.
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Nigeria, which is battling multiple armed groups, said the US strikes were part of an exchange of intelligence and strategic coordination between the two countries.