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Sanusi Madabo, a 40-year-old farmer living in Jabo village in Nigeria, was preparing to sleep on Thursday night when he heard a loud sound, which sounded like a plane crashing. He ran outside his mud house with his wife to see the sky glowing bright red.
The lights remained on for hours, Madabo said: “It was almost like daylight.”
They did not learn until later that they had witnessed an alleged American attack islamic State Camp.
us President donald trump It was announced late Thursday that the US had launched a “powerful and lethal strike” against “the ISIS terrorist operation in north-west Nigeria”. The Nigerian government confirmed that the attack was a joint collaboration with the US government.
Residents of Jabo, a village in the northwestern Nigerian state of Sokoto, told The Associated Press in interviews on Friday that they were left with panic and confusion after airstrikes targeted the town.
He also said that there has never been a terrorist attack in the village, although attacks occur regularly in neighboring villages.
“As it got closer to our area, the heat became intense,” recalled Abubakar Sani, who lives a few houses away from the blast site.
“Our rooms started shaking and then the fire started,” he told the AP. “The Nigerian government should take appropriate steps to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before.”
The Nigerian military did not respond to a request from the AP asking how many locations were targeted.
This is a “new phase of an old conflict”
The attacks are the result of a tense months-long diplomatic standoff between the West African nation and the United States, which has evolved into a new form of cooperation.
The Trump administration has been claiming that Nigeria is becoming a witness Christian Genocide, a claim rejected by the Nigerian government, and which led to initial tensions.
But now Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry said the attacks resulted from intelligence sharing and strategic coordination between the two governments.
Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar called the airstrikes “a new phase of an old conflict” and said he expected more attacks.
“For us, this is something that has been going on,” Tugger said, referring to attacks targeting Christians and Muslims in Nigeria over the years.
Bulama Burkati, a security analyst for sub-Saharan Africa at the Tony Blair Institute, said the lack of information was increasing residents’ fears.
Residents say there were no casualties and security personnel have cordoned off the area.
But the Nigerian government has not yet released information about the terrorists targeted and an estimate of the number of casualties after the attack.
“De-escalation would require the U.S. and Nigerian governments to announce who was targeted, who was attacked, and what has happened so far,” Burkati said. Such information “is still missing, and the more opaque governments are, the more panic there will be on the ground, and that will increase tensions.”
Foreign fighters were active in Nigeria
Analysts say the attacks could be attributed to the Lakurawa group, a relatively new entrant in Nigeria’s complex security crisis.
The group’s first attacks were recorded in the north-western region around 2018, before the Nigerian government officially announced its presence last year. The composition of the group has been documented by security researchers to consist primarily of foreigners from the Sahel region of Africa.
However, experts say links between the Lacurawa group and Islamic State remain unproven. The Islamic State West African Province, an offshoot of ISIS in Nigeria, has its stronghold in the northeastern part of the country, where it is currently involved in a power struggle with its parent organization. boko haram,
“Maybe working with the U.S. government, Nigeria identified Lakurawa as a threat and identified camps belonging to the group,” Burkati said.
Either way, the locals feel unsafe.
Aliyu Garba, a traditional leader of the village, told AP that the attacks left debris scattered around and that residents had reached the scene before security personnel arrived. People Picking up pieces of metal in hopes of finding valuable metal that they can trade, and fearing that they might get hurt.
The attacks also troubled 17-year-old Balira Saidu as she was preparing to get married.
“I’m thinking about my marriage, but right now I’m nervous,” she said. “The strike has changed everything. My family is scared, and I don’t even know if it’s safe to continue with wedding plans in Jabo.”
___ Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria.