What We Know About the US Airstrikes in Nigeria

President Trump authorized US airstrikes on Islamic State militants in Nigeria on Thursday under the rationale that they were attacking Christians. "MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues," Trump wrote on social media. Coverage:

• The strikes: A Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea fired more than a dozen Tomahawk missiles at two camps in the northern Sokoto state, reports the New York Times. A military statement says "multiple ISIS terrorists" were killed.
• Nigeria helped: Foreign Affairs Minister Yusuf Tuggar said Friday that Nigeria provided intelligence to the US for the strikes, adding that he had spoken to Secretary of State Marco Rubio twice beforehand, per the Washington Post. However, he pushed back against Trump's rationale. "Simplistic labels don't solve complex threats," he tweeted. The violence in his country, he argued, "has nothing to do with a particular religion," per the BBC.

• Elaborating: "When you try to reduce it to just say, 'Oh, no, it's Muslims killing Christians in Nigeria,' you see how you can get it completely wrong," he told a Nigerian broadcaster. The Post notes that while violence has indeed targeted Christians, "it has also deeply affected Muslims." The nation of 230 million is roughly divided between members of the two religions. More broadly, the Times notes that coups and Western troop withdrawals in West Africa "have created a vacuum, allowing insurgent groups linked to the Islamic State and to Al Qaeda to expand attacks against military targets and civilians."
• Targets: So who did the Americans hit, exactly? It was not immediately clear, but the AP notes that the nation has at least two ISIS offshoots, the Islamic State West Africa Province and the lesser-known Islamic State Sahel Province. The latter is known locally as Lakurawa, and security analysts thought it was most likely that members of this group were hit.
• A shift: Lakurawa was initially invited by traditional authorities in the northwest to protect communities from bandits starting around 2017, the AP explains. But members appear to have become bandits themselves. "Communities now openly say that Lakurawa are more oppressive and dangerous than the bandits they claim to protect them from," says Malik Samuel, a Nigerian security researcher with Good Governance Africa.