Pete Hegseth, US secretary of defence, says Abu-Bilal Al-Minuki, the second-in-command of ISIS, “was most responsible for killing Christians” in Nigeria.
Al-Minuki was killed on May 15 during a joint US-Nigerian
operation targeting his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.
During a cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday,
Hegseth said the US military’s operations against ISIS in Nigeria was in line
with President Donald Trump’s charge to protect “persecuted Christians”.
US troops began targeting Islamist terrorists late last year
following allegations of a Christian genocide in Nigeria.
“Maybe a year ago, [the president] heard the call of
Nigerian Christians who were being targeted and killed by ISIS. … And he said,
‘Pete, I want the War Department to focus on ensuring that we do everything we
can to protect those Christians,'” Hegseth said, according to a Pentagon
report.
“And, over the past month — and there hasn’t been much
coverage of this — we killed ISIS’ No. 2 [commander], who was most responsible
for killing Christians and trying to target the U.S. homeland.”
President Bola Tinubu, who confirmed Al-Minuki’s death, said
“several lieutenants” of the ISIS second-in-command were also killed in the
mission.
In his remarks, Hegseth said high-quality intelligence
gathered since the start of US operations against ISIS in Nigeria had led to
the elimination of additional “hundreds” of ISIS members allegedly involved in
the killing of Christians in the country.
He added that Trump remains firm in his initiative to
protect Nigerian Christians.
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