A day after part of a missile fired by the US hit their village, landing just meters from its only medical facility, the people of Jabo in northwestern Nigeria are in a state of shock and confusion.
Suleiman Kagara, a resident of this quiet and predominantly Muslim farming community in Tambuwal district of Sokoto state, said he heard a loud blast and saw flames as a projectile flew overhead at around 10pm on Thursday.
Soon after, it came crashing down, exploding on impact with the ground and sending the villagers fleeing in fear.
“We couldn’t sleep last night,” Kagara said. “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Kagara did not realise it at the time, but what he was witnessing was part of a US strike that President Donald Trump would later refer to as a “Christmas present” for terrorists.
Not long after the impact in Jabo, Trump declared that the US had carried out a “powerful and deadly strike” against IS militants in the region, who he accused of “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even centuries!”
According to US Africa Command, the operation neutralised multiple IS militants.
But Trump’s explanation has left Kagara and his fellow villagers scratching their heads.
While parts of Sokoto face challenges with banditry, kidnappings and attacks by armed groups including Lakurawa which Nigeria classifies as a terrorist organisation due to suspected affiliations with Islamic State, villagers say Jabo is not known for terrorist activity and that local Christians coexist peacefully with the Muslim majority.
“In Jabo, we see Christians as our brothers. We don’t have religious conflicts, so we weren’t expecting this,” he said.
Bashar Isah Jabo, a legislator representing Tambuwal in the state parliament, described the village as “a peaceful community” that has “no known history of IS, Lakurawa, or any other terrorist groups operating in the area.”
He said the projectile had struck a field “approximately 500 metres” from a Primary Health Centre in Jabo and that, while there were no casualties, the incident had “caused fear and panic within the community.”
Nigeria’s Information Ministry later said that the government, in collaboration with the US, had “successfully conducted precision strike operations” targeting IS hideouts in the forests of Tangaza district in Sokoto.
&uuid=(email))