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.
