Nigerian villagers rattled by US airstrikes that made their homes shake and the sky glow red

Sanusi Madabo, a 40-year-old farmer in the Nigerian village of Jabo, was preparing for bed on Thursday (December 25, 2025) night when he heard a loud noise that sounded like a plane crashing. He rushed outside his mud house with his wife to see the sky glowing a bright red. The light burned bright for hours, Mr. Madabo said: "It was almost like daytime." He did not learn until later that he had witnessed a U.S. attack on an alleged camp of the militant Islamic State group. U.S. President Donald Trump announced late on Thursday (December 25, 2025) that the United States had launched a "powerful and deadly strike" against IS militants in Nigeria. The Nigerian government has since confirmed that it cooperated with the U.S. government in its strike. A panicked village Nigerian government spokesperson Mohammed Idris said on Friday (December 26, 2025) that the strikes were launched from the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after midnight and involved "16 GPS-guided precision" missiles and also MQ-9 Reaper drones. Mr. Idris said the strikes targeted areas used as "staging grounds by foreign" IS fighters who had sneaked into Nigeria from the Sahel, the southern fringe of Africa's vast Sahara Desert. The government did not release any casualty figures among the militants. Residents of Jabo, a village in the northwestern Nigerian state of Sokoto, spoke to The Associated Press on Friday (December 26, 2025) about panic and confusion among the villagers following the strikes, which they said hit not far from Jabo's outskirts. There were no casualties among the villagers. They said that Jabo has never been attacked as part of the violence the U.S. says is widespread - though such attacks regularly occur in neighbouring villages. Abubakar Sani, who lives on the edge of the village, recalled the "intense heat" as the strikes hit. "Our rooms began to shake, and then fire broke out," he told the AP . "The Nigerian government should take appropriate measures to protect us as citizens," he added. "We have never experienced anything like this before." 'It's a new phase of an old conflict' The strikes are the outcome of a monthslong tense diplomatic clash between the West African nation and the U.S.. The Trump administration has said Nigeria is experiencing a genocide of Christians, a claim the Nigerian government has rejected. However, Nigeria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs now said the strikes resulted from intelligence sharing and strategic coordination between the two governments. Yusuf Tuggar, Nigeria's Foreign Minister, called the airstrikes a "new phase of an old conflict" and said he expected more strikes to follow. "For us, it is something that has been ongoing," Mr. Tuggar added, referring to attacks that have targeted Christians and Muslims in Nigeria for years. Bulama Bukarti, a security analyst on sub-Saharan Africa at the Tony Blair Institute, said the residents' fear is compounded by a lack of information. Nigerian security forces have since cordoned off the area of the strikes and access was not allowed....

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