The world’s second most wanted terrorist is dead.
US President Donald Trump announced late Friday that American and Nigerian forces carried out a joint operation that killed Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he identified as ISIS’s second-in-command globally.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump did not disclose the exact location of the operation, though it took place in Africa, reportedly in Nigeria. He also thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.
WHO WAS ABU-BILAL AL-MINUKI?
Abu-Bilal al-Minuki was a Nigerian-born senior ISIS commander linked to ISWAP and the group’s African operations network. Born in 1982 in Mainok, in Nigeria’s Borno State, al-Minuki rose through the ranks of extremist networks operating in the Lake Chad Basin and Sahel region, becoming a key operational and financial figure within ISIS’s expanding African network.
He was also known by the name Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Ali al-Mainuki, and mainly operated across the Sahel, a vast semi-arid zone stretching nearly 5,900 kilometres across Africa, covering Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Sudan, among others.
Security reports identified al-Minuki as a senior official linked to ISIS’s General Directorate of Provinces, the body overseeing the group’s international branches. He was also associated with the al-Furqan Office, believed to be one of ISIS’s major regional operational and financial coordination networks in Africa.
The former Biden administration had designated al-Minuki a “specially designated global terrorist” in June 2023, according to the US Federal Register.
Notably, there had been earlier reports from Nigerian military sources in early 2024 claiming al-Minuki had been killed during counterterror operations but the 2026 announcement by Trump indicates US and Nigerian intelligence agencies later confirmed his identity and role through a separate high-profile operation.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
The killing did not happen in a vacuum. The US had previously launched strikes against ISIS-linked militants in Nigeria in December 2025, and earlier in 2026 deployed around 200 troops plus MQ-9 drones to support Nigerian forces in a non-combat role.
The operation also comes after a period of diplomatic friction Trump had previously accused Nigeria of persecuting Christians, which the Nigerian government denied, and the US had struck what it described as Islamist bases in northwestern Nigeria on Christmas Day last year. Friday’s announcement marks a sharp pivot: from open antagonism to a joint operation celebrated by the US president himself.
Trump declared that with al-Minuki’s removal, “ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” and that he “will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”
Whether Abuja will publicly claim credit for the mission or navigate carefully around the optics of hosting US combat forces remains to be seen.
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