Nigerian forces, in collaboration with the US, killed 175 members of the Islamic State in a series of joint air and ground attacks in the northeast of the country in recent days, the Defense Headquarters said on Tuesday (19).
DVIDS (Defense Visual Information Distribution Service) released a video purportedly showing the attack.
Reuters was unable to verify the location and date of the video. However, AFRICOM (U.S. Africa Command) stated that it, together with the Nigerian government, carried out additional kinetic strikes against the Islamic State in northeastern Nigeria on May 18.
No results published online prior to May 19 were found.
The military said it destroyed checkpoints, weapons depots, logistics centers and financing networks used by the Islamic State’s West Africa Province, which leads a long-running insurgency in the region.
After suffering major defeats in the Middle East, the Islamic State turned to Africa, a region that represented 86% of the group’s global activity in the first three months of 2026, according to crisis monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data.
“As of May 19, assessments indicated that 175 Islamic State militants had been eliminated from the battlefield,” Nigerian Defense Spokesperson Major General Samaila Uba said in a statement.
The attacks that killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki on May 16, described by both governments as the No. 2 Islamic State leader in the world, were followed by new raids last weekend that also resulted in the deaths of Abd al-Wahhab, an ISWAP leader responsible for attacks and propaganda, Abu Musa al-Mangawi and Abu al-Muthanna al-Muhajir, a prominent media operator and close associate of al-Minuki, according to the statement.
Defense Headquarters stated that the operations are part of an overall.
