Sanusi Madabo, a 40-year-old farmer in the Nigerian village of Jabo, was preparing for bed on Thursday night (Friday NZT) 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, Madabo said: "It was almost like daytime."
He did not learn until later that he had witnessed a US attack on an alleged camp of the militant Islamic State group.
US President Donald Trump announced Friday 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 US government in its strike.
A panicked village
Nigerian government spokesperson Mohammed Idris said Saturday 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.
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 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 US 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 months-long tense diplomatic clash between the West African nation and the US.
The Trump administration has said Nigeria is experiencing a Christian genocide, a claim the Nigerian government has rejected.
But now Nigeria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs 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," 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 fear of residents is compounded by a lack of information.
Residents say there were no casualties, and security operatives have cordoned off the area.
But the Nigerian government has not released information about the militants who were targeted or any post-strike assessment of casualties.
"What can help in dousing the tension is for the American and Nigerian governments to declare who was targeted, what was attacked, and what has happened so far," Bukarti said. Such information is "still missing, and the more opaque the governments are, the more panic there would be on the ground, and that is what will escalate tension".
Foreign fighters operated in Nigeria
Analysts say the strikes might have been intended for the Lakurawa group, a relatively new entrant to Nigeria's complex security crisis.
The group's first attack was recorded around 2018 in the northwestern region before the Nigerian government officially announced its presence last year. The composition of the group has been documented by security researchers as primarily consisting of foreigners from the Sahel region of Africa.
However, experts say ties between the Lakurawa group and the Islamic State are unproven. The Islamic State West African Province, a branch of ISIS in Nigeria, has its strongholds in the northeastern part of the country, where it is currently involved in a power struggle with its parent organisation, Boko Haram.
"What might have happened is that, working with the American government, Nigeria identified Lakurawa as a threat and identified camps that belong to the group," Bukarti said.
Meanwhile, some local people feel vulnerable.
Aliyu Garba, a village leader in Jabo, told AP that debris left by the strikes was scattered, and residents rushed to the scene. Some picked up pieces of the debris, hoping for valuable metal to trade, and Garba said he fears they could get hurt.
For 17-year-old Balira Sa’idu, the strike rattled her as she prepared to get married.
"I am supposed to be thinking about my wedding, but right now I am panicking," she said. "The strike has changed everything. My family is afraid, and I don’t even know if it is safe to continue with the wedding plan in Jabo."
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