LAGOS: By publicly cooperating with the United States on a Christmas Day airstrike, Nigeria's government may have averted humiliating unilateral military action threatened a month ago by President Donald Trump.

But security experts say it is unclear whether such strikes can do much to hinder militants who have long menaced communities in the area.

Trump announced on Truth Social on Thursday (Dec 25) that US forces had launched a strike against Islamic State militants in northwest Nigeria at the request of Nigeria's government. He said the group had been targeting Christians in the region.

Local media reported loud explosions in the village of Jabo on the evening of Christmas Day. Reuters has not been able to confirm whether there were casualties.

Trump said on Friday that a US military strike targeting Islamic state militants in Nigeria was originally supposed to take place on Wednesday, but he ordered it delayed by a day.

"They were going to do it earlier," Trump told Politico in an interview. "And I said, ‘nope, let’s give a Christmas present.’ … They didn’t think that was coming, but we hit them hard. Every camp got decimated."

A US defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the strike was carried out by about a dozen Tomahawk missiles launched from a US Navy warship in the Gulf of Guinea.

Abuja confirmed it had approved the operation. Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar said on Friday that Nigeria had acted jointly with the US, but that no specific religion had been targeted.

"Nigeria is a multi-religious country, and we're working with partners like the US to fight terrorism and protect lives and property," Tuggar told Nigeria's Channels Television.

SYMBOLIC OR LONG-TERM IMPACT?

After the strike, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on X that there was "more to come."

The US official said another strike did not appear imminent, but did not rule out future operations.

This specific strike was carried out by the United States, the official said, in part because the location was too remote for Nigerian forces to reach.

"It's partially symbolic," the official said, adding that the aim was also deterrence and to send a message that the Trump administration was prepared to use the military.

The northwestern area where Thursday's airstrike took place has been plagued since 2024 by increasing violence from members of the Lakurawa sect, a strict Sunni movement that claims affiliation with the Islamic State group.

Formed as a vigilante outfit, the group evolved into a jihadist movement enforcing strict rule across hundreds of villages in the area. Nigeria declared the group a terrorist organisation early this year.

"It's very likely this is the group Trump referred to when mentioning US military strikes in Nigeria," said Confidence MacHarry, senior analyst at Lagos-based SBM Intelligence. "They've also been linked to widespread cattle theft, with most of the stolen animals ending up in markets along the Nigeria-Niger border."

Cameron Hudson, a former US official who worked on Africa-related issues, said the strike was unlikely to have a big impact in the near term.

"It's not realistic to think that a few cruise missiles are going to change much in the short term," Hudson said. "The Trump administration will have to demonstrate its own long-term commitment to ending this militancy if it hopes to have any effect."

TRUMP THREATENS ACTION TO PROTECT CHRISTIANS

Nigeria's population of over 230 million people is roughly evenly divided among Christians, who predominate in the south, and Muslims, who predominate in the north.

Last month, Trump threatened to order his forces to take military action in Nigeria unless the authorities there acted to stop what he described as the persecution of Christians.

While Nigeria has had persistent security challenges, including violence and kidnappings by Islamist insurgents in the north, it strongly denies that Christians are subjected to systematic persecution.

Its government responded to Trump's threat by saying it intended to work with Washington against militants, while rejecting US language that suggested Christians were in particular peril.

"After Trump threatened to come guns-blazing in Nigeria, we saw a Nigerian delegation visit the US," said Kabir Adamu, managing director of Abuja-based Beacon Security and Intelligence Limited.

"The attorney general was involved, and agreements were signed. Then we learned of US surveillance missions mapping terrorist locations."

Participating in the strike could raise a risk that the government could be perceived as endorsing Trump's language on wider sectarian strife, a sensitive issue throughout Nigeria's history.

"Trump is pandering to domestic evangelical Christian objectives with his 'Christian genocide' narrative," Adamu said.

Storm-hit Southern California was at risk on Friday (Dec 26) of more floods hampering millions of motorists traveling after Christmas, but the National Weather Service predicts a drier weekend.

The holiday deluge that started in earnest on Christmas Eve was spawned by the region's latest atmospheric storm, a vast airborne current of dense moisture siphoned from the Pacific, that swept inland over the greater Los Angeles area.

It dumped 6 inches of rain in the Los Angeles area with up to 18 inches of rain in the mountains, washing out some roads, and spurred evacuations and some shelter-in-place orders.

An additional 1-to-3 inches of rain is expected on Friday, said Tom Kines, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather, a commercial forecasting company.

"Our overall picture is that there's just one more day of this mess, mostly across Southern California, specifically in the LA area," Kines said on Friday. "We still have some issues today with bouts of heavy rain, but this weekend is mainly dry, thankfully."

More than 14.5 million Californians were expected to travel by car over the Christmas holiday, according to AAA. The coming drier weather should make traveling easier, after days of slick or flooded roads, forecasters said.

The atmospheric river that brought the trouble will wind down through Friday across California with lingering heavy rainfall, heavy mountain snow, and gusty winds.

Many of the evacuation warnings issued in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties were lifted on Christmas Day. But the orders remain on Friday in the hard-hit town of Wrightwood, a rural community with a population of about 5,000 in the San Gabriel Mountains on the border between Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

Aerial video footage posted online on Christmas Eve by the fire department showed rivers of mud coursing through inundated cabin neighbourhoods, and mud-covered cars and homes.

Videos posted online on Thursday showed some residents scrambling over washed-out roads, picking through rubble on Christmas Day as streams of water still flowed over mounds of mud and into gullies that were once streets.

A 74 year old motorist died on Sunday in Redding, California, when he drove around police barricades blocking a flooded road into deep floodwater where his pick up truck became submerged, Redding police said in a statement.

DAMASCUS: Eight people were killed in an explosion at a mosque of the Alawite minority sect in the Syrian city of Homs on Friday (Dec 26), Syrian state news agency SANA said.

An ultra-conservative Sunni Syrian group known as Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah said on its Telegram channels that it carried out the attack. The group previously claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Damascus church in June that killed 20 people.

SANA cited Syrian Health Ministry official Najib al-Naasan as saying 18 others were wounded and that the figures were not final, indicating they could rise.

The city's press office said an explosive device had detonated inside the Imam Ali bin Abi Talib mosque and that security forces had cordoned off the area.

Local official Issam Naameh told Reuters the blast occurred during Friday noon prayers.

The Supreme Alawite Islamic Council, a body that says it represents Alawites in Syria and abroad, condemned what it called a systematic campaign of killings, forced displacement, detentions and incitement against Alawites for more than a year. It accused the Damascus authorities of responsibility, and said continued attacks risk driving the country toward collapse.

Syria's Foreign Ministry condemned the blast as a "terrorist crime". Regional countries including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Qatar also condemned the attack.

Syrian state media SANA published footage of rescuers and security forces examining debris splayed across the mosque's green carpet.

Syria has been rocked by several episodes of sectarian violence since longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, was ousted by a rebel offensive last year and replaced by a government led by members of the Sunni Muslim majority.

Earlier this month, two American soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in central Syria by an attacker described by the authorities as a suspected member of the Islamic State.