U.S. and Nigerian military forces successfully executed a joint operation in Africa, resulting in the death of a prominent Islamic State leader, President Donald Trump announced.
Trump shared the news of Abu-Bilal al-Minuki’s death in a post on his Truth Social platform, highlighting that this operation eliminated one of the world’s top terrorists.
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“He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans,” Trump wrote. “With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished.”
The Nigerian-born al-Minuki was identified in a 2023 State Department bulletin as a leader of ISIS and was sanctioned by the Treasury Department as a specially designated global terrorist.
Trump thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the U.S. operation.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” he said.
“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” he added.
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu also praised the joint mission.
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He called it a “significant example of effective collaboration in the fight against terrorism.”
“Our determined Nigerian Armed Forces, working closely with the Armed Forces of the United States, conducted a daring joint operation that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State,” Tinubu said.
The strike caps months of intelligence gathering and military coordination between Washington and the Nigerian government, and it marks the highest-profile counterterrorism operation on African soil during Trump’s second term.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth identified al-Minuki in a Saturday morning post on X as “the senior ISIS General Directorate of Provinces Emir, the number two for ISIS globally, responsible for overseeing the planning of attacks, directing hostage-taking and managing financial operations.”
AFRICOM’s own statement called him “the director of global operations for ISIS” and “the most active terrorist in the world.”
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The command added that al-Minuki provided “strategic guidance to the ISIS global network on media and financial operations as well as the development and manufacturing of weapons, explosives, and drones.”
“At the direction of the President of the United States and the Secretary of War, and in coordination with the Government of Nigeria, U.S. Africa Command conducted an operation against ISIS in Northeastern Nigeria on May 16, 2026,” the command noted in a statement.
AFRICOM commander U.S. Air Force Gen. Dagvin Anderson hailed the partnership with Nigeria’s armed forces. He said the mission “was made possible through the cooperation and coordination of our forces in recent months.”
He added: “Make no mistake, our two nations will relentlessly pursue and neutralize terrorist threats and are committed to protecting our people and interests.”
The administration had earlier indicated that safeguarding Christians facing Islamist violence in West Africa was a key policy focus.
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Hegseth made the connection explicit, saying Trump had “declared to the world that we will help protect Christians in Nigeria and instructed the Department of War to prepare for action.”
“So, for months, we hunted this top ISIS leader in Nigeria who was killing Christians, and we killed him, and his entire posse,” the secretary noted further.
The operation also follows the Trump administration’s relentless pursuit of ISIS and other international terrorist organizations following attacks on American forces.
On December 13, 2025, an ISIS ambush in Palmyra, Syria, resulted in the deaths of two U.S. service members and an American interpreter. In response to this attack, Operation Hawkeye Strike was initiated, during which the U.S. military conducted ten airstrikes against over 30 ISIS targets throughout Syria.
By February, U.S. Central Command announced that more than 50 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured, and over 100 ISIS infrastructure targets had been struck during two months of focused operations in the region.
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