US President Donald Trump on Saturday announced that Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, regarded as the global second-in-command of ISIS, was killed in a joint military operation carried out by American troops and Nigerian forces.
“Tonight, under my direction, courageous US forces and the Nigerian Armed Forces successfully carried out a highly coordinated and complex mission to remove the world’s most active terrorist from the battlefield. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, ISIS’s global second-in-command, believed he could remain hidden in Africa, but we had intelligence sources closely tracking his activities,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“He will no longer be able to terrorize the people of Africa or assist in planning attacks against Americans. His elimination has significantly weakened ISIS’s global operations. I also thank the Government of Nigeria for its cooperation in carrying out this mission,” Donald Trump said in the post.
Earlier, Donald Trump had criticized Nigeria, claiming that Christians in the country were facing persecution.
Who was Abu Bilal al-Minuki?
Abu-Bilal al-Minuki was born in Nigeria’s Borno State in 1982. On June 8, 2023, the United States designated him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, along with another ISIS leader, Abdallah Makki Muslih al-Rufay’i, who was linked to the Iraq-based ISIS network.
According to the Counter Extremism Project, al-Minuki is believed to have taken on a regional leadership role within ISIS after the 2018 death of Mamman Nur, the former chief of the Islamic State West Africa Province. Considered one of Nur’s main rivals, al-Minuki later rose to prominence within ISWAP and was frequently described as a hardline militant leader.
Regional experts have also highlighted al-Minuki’s troubled relationship with Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Boko Haram. According to the Counter Extremism Project, Shekau reportedly refused an ISIS directive between March 2015 and early 2016 to send fighters to Libya. Al-Minuki, who was then serving as ISWAP’s commander in the Lake Chad region, is said to have overseen the deployment instead. The decision reportedly intensified tensions with Shekau, who opposed closer collaboration with ISIS.
It is still unclear when al-Minuki became the top leader of ISIS’s al-Furqan Office, regarded as one of the group’s most active and well-established regional networks. These regional offices are responsible for guiding ISIS affiliates in their operations and helping them secure international funding.
The al-Furqan Office supervises operations in Nigeria and nearby countries, as well as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara network, which operates across the western Sahel region.