By Kanishka Singh<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said there could be more strikes by the U.S. in Nigeria if Christians are \u200bkilled in the African nation, even as Nigeria has previously denied \u200cChristians there are subjected to systematic persecution.<\/p>\n
Trump’s comments in an interview with the New York Times \u200cwere published on the newspaper’s website on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Trump made the remarks when asked about Washington’s Christmas Day military strike in Nigeria. The U.S. military said at the time it carried out a strike against Islamic State militants in northwest Nigeria at \u2060the request of Nigeria’s government.<\/p>\n
Nigeria \u200csaid then that the strike was a “joint operation” targeting “terrorists,” and had “nothing to do with a particular religion.”<\/p>\n
“I’d love to make it \u200da one-time strike … But if they continue to kill Christians, it will be a many-time strike,” Trump was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
When asked about his own Africa adviser having said \u200bthat Islamic State and Boko Haram militants were killing more Muslims than Christians, \u200cTrump responded: “I think that Muslims are being killed also in Nigeria. But it’s mostly Christians.”<\/p>\n
Trump, in late October, began warning that Christianity faces an “existential threat” in Nigeria and threatened to militarily intervene in the West African country over what he says is its failure to stop violence targeting Christian communities.<\/p>\n
Nigeria’s population of over \u2060230 million people is roughly evenly divided \u200bamong Christians, who predominate in the south, and \u200bMuslims, who predominate in the north.<\/p>\n
While Nigeria has had persistent security problems, including violence and kidnappings by Islamist insurgents in the north, \u200dit strongly denies \u2060that Christians are subjected to systematic persecution.<\/p>\n
Its government responded to Trump’s past threats by saying it intended to work with Washington against militants, while \u2060rejecting U.S. language that suggested Christians were in particular peril. Nigerian authorities note that militants have \u200ckilled many Muslims as well as Christians.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in \u200cWashington; Editing by Chris Reese, Rod Nickel)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON, Jan 8 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said there could be more strikes by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[750,8277,122,8278],"class_list":{"0":"post-12128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nigeria","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-islamic-state-militants","10":"tag-nigeria","11":"tag-systematic-persecution"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}