The US also said Al-Qaeda has started penetrating the north-western part of Nigeria. In a media briefing seen by TheCable, Dagvin Anderson, Commander of the US special operations command, Africa, said Al-Qaeda is also expanding to other parts of West Africa.

Anderson said the US will continue to partner with Nigeria in sharing intelligence.

He said “We have engaged with Nigeria and continue to engage with them in intel sharing and in understanding what these violent extremists are doing and that has been absolutely critical to their engagements up in the Borno state and into an emerging area of northwest Nigeria that we’re seeing al-Qaeda starting to make some inroads in. So, this intelligence sharing is absolutely vital and we stay fully engaged with the government of Nigeria to provide them with an understanding of what these terrorists are doing, what Boko Haram is doing, what ISIS-West Africa is doing, and how ISIS and al-Qaeda are looking to expand further south into the littoral areas. When it comes to Nigeria in general, Nigeria, obviously, is a critical nation to West Africa. It is a critical nation and we realise that Nigeria is a lynching”.

Gani Adams, the Aare Ona Kakanfo-in-Council, in a statement released after an extraordinary meeting of the council recently, claimed suspected ISIS terrorists were now in Oke-Ogun, Oyo State.

Reacting to Gani’s claim, the Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, Maj.-Gen. John Enenche said it is nothing but just an alarm and that the Nigerian security agencies were equal to the task, and would not handle it with kid gloves.

Enenche said “From the report I have, it is just that one where the U.S. AFRICOM advised and cautioned us about, so I believe that is what people are magnifying. But I can tell you that we have put machinery in place together with other security agencies. So, we should be careful, because we get such stories every day, which may be fake, though it could be true, we don’t overlook such things. My response is that it is not new and if it is new, tell the public that we have every machinery in place together with other security agencies, as usual, to handle it with their cooperation.”

Qirdash, once tipped to replace Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as head of ISIS, was arrested on Wednesday, May 20.

The statement from the Iraqi National Intelligence Service read “Today, the terrorist named Abdulnasser al-Qirdash, the candidate to succeed the criminal al-Baghdadi, was arrested. The arrest came after accurate intelligence. He served as the head of the commission authorised by the terrorist organisation Daesh, and he worked with the organisation as a leader from the time of the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until the battles of al-Baghouz that he led himself.”

Details on how he was captured or where the operation took place have not been revealed yet.

Flanked by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Vice President Mike Pence, Trump confirmed that an Iranian missile attack on US forces late Tuesday did not result in any American casualties and said Iran “appears to be standing down.”

Iran launched more than 20 missiles at two US-occupied Iraqi bases in response to Soleimani’s killing.

“I’m pleased to inform you, the American people should be extremely grateful and happy no Americans were harmed in last night’s attack by the Iranian regime,” Trump said. He added that there was only minimal damage to the installations.

Following Trump’s speech, a host of right-wing media figures and pundits lauded the president for what they said was his de-escalation of the conflict with Iran. A “straight news” anchor on Fox suggested those who’ve criticized Trump’s escalation with Iran are “deranged.”

“There’s this sense that the president doesn’t get credit when something goes right,” Fox host Bret Baier said Wednesday. “You wonder whether Trump derangement syndrome factors in to some of the responses you hear here in Washington.”

But they seemed to ignore the fact that Trump’s own actions were what prompted tensions between the US and Iran to go from hot to boiling in a matter of days.

Trump’s decision to order Soleimani’s assassination was almost universally condemned after it was publicly announced.

Among the first to react was the United Kingdom, historically the United States’ closest ally.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said in a statement on Friday that conflict with Iran “is in none of our interests” and urged “all parties to de-escalate.”

Other UK leaders also criticized the US for not consulting it before carrying out the strike.

Tom Tugendhat, Raab’s Conservative Party colleague and the chair of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told the BBC that “the purpose of having allies is that we can surprise our enemies and not each other.”

He added that “it’s been a pattern, sadly, which has been a bit of a shame, that the US administration of late has not shared with us and that is a matter of concern.”

About 30 rockets landed at the base used by the U.S and Iraqi forces, the official said.

“Several” U.S. troops were also injured in the rocket attack, the official said. It’s not immediately clear how severe the injuries are.

This is the 11th rocket attack on U.S. and Iraqi forces since late October, according to a U.S. defence official.

Two U.S. officials blamed Iranian-backed proxy forces the attack, not the Islamic State (ISIS).

“We’ve not seen ISIS conduct sophisticated rocket attacks in probably a year,” said the official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

There are roughly 5,000 U.S. troops deployed to Iraq.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for two separate rocket attacks on the Baghdad International Airport, on Dec. 9 and 11, where U.S. and Iraqi forces are located on the other side of the commercial airport.

In a statement, Pompeo warned of a “decisive U.S. response” if any Americans were harmed in the future.

The militant group’s video was produced by its own so-called news agency, Amaq, and was released the day after Christmas.

The 56-second video has Arabic captions but does not have audio.

In the video, ISIS soldiers wearing beige uniforms and black masks are lined up behind the Christian men. One captive in the middle is shot while the other 10 are pushed to the ground and beheaded. Not a lot of details were given about the victims other than they were male, Christian and “captured in the past weeks” in Nigeria’s north-eastern Borno State.

In an earlier video seen by Reuters, the captives pleaded for the Christian Association of Nigeria and President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene to save them.

“We killed them as revenge for the killing of our leaders, including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and (ISIS spokesman) Abul-Hasan al-Muhaiir,'” said a member of the terror group’s media unit, according to journalist Ahmad Salkida, who was first sent the video shot in an unidentified outdoor area.

In October, Baghdadi killed himself during a U.S. raid on a compound in northwest Syria, seven months after the so-called ISIS “caliphate” officially crumbled as the terrorist group was defeated in its final swath of Syrian territory in March.

Raphael Gluck, the co-founder of Jihadoscope, which monitors online activity by Islamist extremists, told Fox News that ISIS affiliates are rising across Africa – almost unchecked.

“We saw a terrible ambush of U.S. forces in Niger in 2017, that played into ISIS propaganda for months and really put Africa in focus, it has only grown in strength since,” he said.

Mueller, 26, was a humanitarian worker from Prescott, Ariz., who was captured while leaving a hospital in Aleppo, Syria, during that nation’s bloody civil war in 2013. She is believed to have been tortured and raped by al-Baghdadi himself until her death 18 months later.

The mission that killed al-Baghdadi in his Idlib hideout this weekend was named after Mueller, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said Sunday morning on “Meet The Press.”

“One of the things that Gen. [Mark] Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did was named the operation that took down al-Baghdadi after Kayla Mueller, after what she had suffered,” O’Brien said. “And that was something that people should know. But justice was brought to those Americans who were so brutally killed, as were others, as the president pointed out.”

Marsha Mueller, the woman’s mother, praised President Trump and the Special Operations commandos who raided the compound and told the Arizona Republic that she believes if “Obama had been as decisive as Trump” her daughter may still be alive.

Kayla Mueller’s parents said on Sunday that they hope the ISIS leader’s death will reveal more answers about what happened to their daughter. Even though they confirmed her death through pictures sent by militants, their daughter’s body was never recovered.

“She was held in many prisons,” Carl Mueller, her father, told the Republic on Sunday.  “She was held in solitary confinement. She was tortured.  She was intimidated. She was ultimately raped by al-Baghdadi himself.”

“She was held in solitary confinement. She was tortured.  She was intimidated. She was ultimately raped by al-Baghdadi himself.”

— Carl Mueller, Kayla’s father

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Amash said it was “pretty clear” from the outset that Trump had no plans of bringing the U.S. troops deployed in northern Syria back to American soil.

“He’s moving troops back into Iraq. He’s moving other troops into Saudi Arabia,” said Amash, who earlier this year left the Republican Party over his disagreements with Trump.  “He’s using our forces as paid mercenaries. What happened to the American people having their voices heard through their representatives in Congress.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said over the weekend that under current plans all U.S. troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq and the American military will continue to conduct operations against the Islamic State group to prevent its resurgence.

Esper, who arrived in the Afghan capital on Sunday, did not rule out the idea that U.S. forces would conduct counterterrorism missions from Iraq into Syria. But he told reporters traveling with him that those details will be worked out over time.

His comments were the first to specifically lay out where American troops will go as they shift from Syria and what the counter-ISIS fight could look like. Esper, who flew overnight to Afghanistan, said he has spoken to his Iraqi counterpart about the plan to shift about 1,000 troops leaving Syria into western Iraq.