U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed that American military strikes in Nigeria helped prevent the mass killing of Christians by Islamic State-linked militants, pledging to continue targeting terrorist groups operating in the country.

Speaking at an event in Washington on Friday, Trump defended his administration’s decision to authorize military operations against fighters affiliated with the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), saying the strikes had significantly reduced attacks on Christian communities.

“As you know, we recently struck Nigeria and largely ended the slaughter of great Christian populations,” Trump said. “They have a great Christian population. They were being butchered—thousands and thousands of people were being killed, children, women, old people, just being slaughtered, hacked to death.”

The U.S. president said the operations had sent a strong warning to the militants.

“They know that if they go further, the attack will be far greater and that they don’t want to really get involved anymore so much,” he said.

Trump also claimed U.S. forces had eliminated several senior terrorist commanders during the operations.

“We hit them very hard. We knocked out their leader. We knocked out their second leader and their third leader,” he said, drawing comparisons between the campaign in Nigeria and U.S. military operations against Iran.

Reiterating his administration’s commitment to combating religious persecution, Trump said, “I’m saving Christians throughout the world, even though we are not in those various countries where you read about this.”

He added that the United States would continue pursuing terrorist groups wherever they operate, using what he described as “the greatest weapons on earth” to prevent attacks on civilians.

Trump’s remarks follow months of growing security cooperation between Washington and Abuja in the fight against extremist groups operating in Nigeria. The United States has increased intelligence-sharing and military support for Nigerian security forces as part of broader counterterrorism efforts targeting ISWAP and other jihadist organisations.

Nigeria has battled a complex insurgency for more than a decade involving Boko Haram, ISWAP and other armed groups responsible for thousands of deaths, mass displacement, kidnappings and attacks on civilian communities across the northeast and parts of the northwest.

Although Trump has frequently highlighted the plight of Christians in Nigeria and has accused extremist groups of targeting them because of their faith, Nigerian authorities and independent security analysts say the conflict affects both Christians and Muslims. They note that insurgency, banditry, communal violence and competition over land and resources all contribute to the country’s security challenges.

Human rights organisations have documented attacks on churches, Christian communities and clergy, while Muslim communities have also suffered deadly assaults, abductions and displacement at the hands of insurgents and criminal gangs.