Who was Abu Bilal al-Minuki? ISIS No. 2 killed in US-Nigerian military operation

President Donald Trump on Friday, May 15, made a surprise announcement about ISIS’s second-in-command leader.

Taking to Truth Social, President Trump revealed that Abu Bolal al-Minuki had been killed in a joint military operation by US and Nigerian forces on Friday, May 15, 2026.

Trump posted on Truth Social late Friday and wrote, “Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield.”

While disclosing the identity of the target, he named him as “Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally,” adding, “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”

Who was Abu-Bilal al-Minuki?

The U.S. State Department in 2023 labeled Al-Minuki, a Nigerian national, as a leader of the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Africa’s Sahel region.

During that time, he was serving as a senior official in one of the ISIS General Directorate of Provinces' offices, which was responsible for operation guidance and funding around the world, per the State Department.

Al-Minuki was named on the global terrorist list in 2023 by the U.S. Treasury Department.

As per the publicly available data from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, al-Minuki was born in 1982 in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno, which shares a border with Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

ISIS has been greatly reduced since 2017, when the U.S., its regional allies, Iran, and other forces began taking back large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria from the group’s dominant areas.

But the group is said to have been carrying out terrorist activities in parts of the Middle East and Africa since then, as per CBS report.

President Trump’s first order of military strikes on ISIS targets in Nigeria came on Christmas last year resulted in the killing of multiple ISIS terrorists.