U.S., Nigerian forces killed 199 suspected terrorists in secret mission, top Trump adviser reveals

Original article here

U.S. and Nigerian forces killed nearly 200 suspected terrorists and gathered massive new evidence about ISIS extremists during a recent secret mission in Africa, President Donald Trump’s top counterterrorism adviser tells Just the News.

Dr. Sebastian Gorka, the Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council, said Trump approved sending American troops into Nigeria last month to eliminate a top Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader. The mission was successful with the death of Abu-Bilal al-Minuki.

Gorka said he can now reveal that 199 enemies were killed in the attack and approximately 1,031 jihadists have been killed under the president’s second term.

“This is a historic moment, because that operation in Nigeria … that one operation led to the killing of 199 enemies,” Gorka said on the “Just The News, No Noise” TV show. “That is the most successful counterterrorism operation since September 11. That’s the enormity of what the president’s new counterterrorism strategy is doing for Americans to keep us all safe.”

Gorka said that when Trump came into power in 2016, former President Barack Obama told him that ISIS was something Americans would need to live with. The president rejected that notion.

“When the president came into office the first time, he unleashed our operators, and he said, ‘We are going to destroy the physical caliphate of ISIS,’ which Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had declared back in 2014 and within a matter of months that physical caliphate that had taken territory in Iraq and Syria was gone,” he said.

The director noted that when former President Joe Biden came to power, he paused counterterrorism operations, which gave American enemies that survived the first Trump administration the time to rebuild in areas like Nigeria.

Christmas Day attack:

Gorka noted the Christmas Day airstrikes the United States launched at ISIS camps in Nigeria last year, which the president claimed at the time had saved “tens, hundreds of thousands” of lives. The strikes were in retaliation for ISIS purportedly killing Christians in Nigeria.

“He sent a message to those jihadis. ‘I’m not here to do regime change, I’m not here to fix other countries, but if you wantonly go after Christians because they’re Christians, we will come down on you like the hammers of hell,'” Gorka said. “So, whether it’s Christmas Day or whether it’s the biggest CT operation ever since September the 11th … President Trump is back in the business of counterterrorism.”

Gorka said the successes of the recent counterterrorism strikes were because of continual collaboration between the National Security Council, the War Department and the State Department.

The director also noted that the Trump administration has targeted all kinds of ISIS leaders, not just the masterminds.

“It’s also the person who uses social media to spread that ideology of jihad,” he said. “So these individuals we’re going after, for example, this number two in ISIS, aren’t just, you know, nuts and bolts planners or plotters, these are people who are trying to spread that message of ‘it’s important to kill Christians or Jews or apostates wherever you find them.'”

Peace through strength:

The director said that the success of the administration has been because of the president’s directive to protect the nation by demonstrating peace through strength.

“We will do our threat analysis based on reality. We’re not going to allow politics to infect national security,” Gorka said. “We’re going to look at the threats, and the threats are cartels, jihadis, and sadly, left-wing violent extremists like Antifa … We’re not going to do politics, we’re going to do national security, and if there’s a threat, we are dealing with it.”

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.