Some residents in the Sokoto village of Jabo, where the US airstrikes against Islamic State (IS) terrorists hit home, said there had been no casualties and that security forces had cordoned off the area.
There have been conflicting accounts on if anyone was killed in the airstrikes, the Guardian UK reported on Friday, 26 December.
Some in the village described panic and confusion as the US missiles rocked the community.
“As it approached our area, the heat became intense,” Abubakar Sani told the Associated Press(AP) on Friday. “The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens. We have never experienced anything like this before.”
Sanusi Madabo, a farmer, said the sky glowed a bright red for hours from what he learned only later had been a US airstrike. “It was almost like daytime,” he said.
But a local official in the Tangaza area of Sokoto state, Isa Salihu Bashir, told the BBC the strikes had “hit some Lakurawa terrorist camps.” Lakurawa is the local arm of IS in North-West and parts of Middle Belt Nigeria.
He said many fighters had been killed but the death toll was unclear. The BBC report said the broadcast station could not independently verify Bashir’s account.
The US military said an “initial assessment” suggested “multiple” fatalities in Sokoto State.
However, the emerging account of lack of casualties seemed at odds with the Federal Government’s official version as related on Friday by Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, and by US President Donald Trump himself immediately after the strikes.
Idris said: “A total of 16 GPS-guided precision munitions were deployed using MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial platforms, successfully neutralising the targeted ISIS elements attempting to penetrate Nigeria from the Sahel corridor.”
Earlier, after the strikes, Trump had posted on his Truth Social platform and highlighted the “hell” in casualties suffered by the terrorists.
His post: “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!
“I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was.
“Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”
Agence France-Presse(AFP) spoke to people around Jabo, who did not say if there had been casualties, but revealed that their area was sometimes a target of armed “bandit” gangs and jihadists, and not a stronghold for the groups.
“We heard a loud explosion which shook the whole town and everyone was scared,” said Haruna Kallah from Jabo, some 60 miles (100km) south of Sokoto city near the Niger border.
Kallah told AFP he originally thought the attack was carried out by Lakurawa, adding that there had not been an attack in about two years.
Villagers reportedly found burning fragments from the bombardment on the outskirts of the village.
Ayuba Abdulkarim, another Jabo resident, said: “There was a huge explosion and everyone was terrified and thought the town was under attack from Lakurawa. Luckily no one was hurt, but fragments from the bomb caused damage to walls and roofs of nearby homes.”
Tukur Shehu, a resident of Tangaza, a neighbouring district, said two strikes targeted Warriya and Alkassim villages – known to house Lakurawa camps, from where they launch attacks and keep hostages.
Type Of Weapons Deployed
Other reports said, aside the MQ-9 Reaper drone and others, another weapon employed in the strike was the Tomahawk, a long range subsonic cruise missile that carries a 450 kilogram high explosive warhead.
With a range exceeding 1,000 km, the Tomahawk can strike deep inland targets from sea- or air-launched platforms.
The missile uses a multi-mode navigation system. These include GPS, INS, Terrain Contour Matching and Digital Scene Area Correlation.
These systems allow the Tomahawk to strike within meters of its target. It can also loiter over an area and retarget mid flight.
From launch points in the Gulf of Guinea, time to impact was in minutes.
The missiles approached at low altitude, offering little to no warning. The terrorists never heard them coming.
US planes conducted surveillance missions over the region earlier this month. It is believed they used an airport in neighbouring Ghana as a base.
Forests in Sokoto, which is bordered by Niger Republic to the north, have been used as bases by gangs of armed bandits and members of Lakurawa.
Some analysts say the IS branch started when a group of herders joined together to fight bandits in the absence of state support. Sokoto state is mostly Muslim.
For residents of Sokoto, the US strikes brought back memories of when the Nigerian Air Force mistakenly bombed an area just an hour away from Jabo on Christmas Day last year. The villagers received compensation only five days ago, according to the Air Force’s Facebook page, which said 13 civilians had been “unintentionally killed” and eight injured.
*PHOTO CAPTION: One of the terrorists’ camps hit by the missiles.
