President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to send US forces into Nigeria with “guns-a-blazing” if Africa’s most populous country does not stem what he described as the killing of Christians by Islamists.
In an explosive post on his Truth Social platform, the Republican leader — who had campaigned unsuccessfully for the Nobel Peace Prize — said he asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack, one day after warning that Christianity was “facing an existential threat in Nigeria.”
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” he said.
“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians,” he added.
He ended his post with “WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”
Nigeria is embroiled in numerous conflicts that experts say have killed both Christians and Muslims without distinction.
Trump on Friday posted, without evidence, that “thousands of Christians are being killed (and) Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.”
Claims of Christian persecution have also been pushed by some in Nigeria, where ethnic, religious and regional divisions have flared with deadly consequences in the past and still shape the country’s modern politics.
Nigeria is almost evenly divided between a Muslim-majority north and a largely Christian south.
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