The United States has deployed a small military force to Nigeria, Gen. Dagwin Anderson, head of US Africa Command, announced on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
This is the first confirmation of the presence of US forces on the ground since Washington began airstrikes on Christmas.
He noted that the US forces were deployed after the two countries agreed on the need to counter the terrorist threat in West Africa.
“This has led to increased cooperation between our countries, including a small US force,“ the general said. Anderson did not specify the size of the force or the parameters of their mission.
Nigerian Defense Minister Christopher Musa confirmed that such a force was operating in Nigeria, but did not provide further details.
A former US official suggested that the US team was largely involved in gathering intelligence and enabling Nigerian forces to carry out strikes against groups linked to terrorism.
According to sources, Washington has increased pressure on Abuja, accusing Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from Islamist militants operating in the northwestern part of the country.
On December 25, the US military began a “powerful and deadly” strike against Islamic State targets in northwestern Nigeria.
Trump vowed that the United States, under his leadership, "will not allow radical Islamic terrorism to flourish." He called Nigeria a "country of particular concern" and said that "thousands" of Christians had been killed there.
According to The Washington Post, Nigerian and American officials stressed that the operation was coordinated and aimed at "radical terrorists." However, the choice of targets likely reflects Nigeria's domestic agenda, while the scale of the strike - 16 Tomahawk missiles worth an estimated $30 million - seems disproportionate to the threat posed by a small militant group, the newspaper noted at the time.
Nigeria is officially a secular state, but its population is almost evenly divided between Muslims (53%) and Christians (45%), The Guardian reports. The country has seen several religiously motivated massacres in the past year, CNN reports. In April, President Bola Tinubu said at least 40 people had been killed in an attack by militants on a Christian farming community in the north of the country. Two months later, rights activists said more than 100 people had been killed in the predominantly Christian village of Yelawat in Benue state.