US President Donald Trump has repeated his threat of a military operation in Nigeria over killings of Christians, and that it could be ground or air attacks.
As claims of Christian "persecution" in Africa's most populous country have found traction online among the US and European right, experts say Nigeria's myriad conflicts kill both Christians and Muslims without distinction.
Trump's remarks came after the Nigerian presidency suggested a meeting between the two leaders to resolve the issue.
Asked by an AFP reporter aboard Air Force One if he was considering US troops on the ground in Nigeria or air strikes, Trump replied: "Could be, I mean, a lot of things -- I envisage a lot of things."
"They're killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We're not going to allow that to happen," he said Sunday.
Nigeria's government denies that Christians are especially targeted.
In an explosive post on his Truth Social platform Saturday, Trump said that he asked the Pentagon to map out a possible plan of attack in Nigeria, one day after warning that Christianity was "facing an existential threat" in the west African nation.
In his post, Trump said that if Nigeria does not stem the killings, the United States will attack and "it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians."
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's spokesman Daniel Bwala told AFP on Sunday that "Nigeria is US's partner in the global fight against terrorism. When leaders meet there would be better outcomes."
"Nigeria welcomes US support to fight terrorism as long as it respects our territorial integrity," he said.
"We know that Donald Trump has his own style of communication," he said, suggesting the post was a way to "force a sit-down between the two leaders so they can iron out a common front to fight their insecurity."
Earlier, Bwala had suggested in a post on X that the two leaders could meet soon.
"As for the differences as to whether terrorists in Nigeria target only Christians or in fact all faiths and no faiths, the differences if they exist, would be discussed and resolved by the two leaders when they meet in the coming days, either in State House or White House."
Bwala, who was speaking on the phone from Washington, declined to disclose details of any potential meeting.
Christians, Muslims 'being killed'
Trump posted on Friday, without evidence, that "thousands of Christians are being killed (and) Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter."
Nigeria faces a jihadist conflict in its northeast, "bandit" gangs in the northwest, and deadly farmer-herder conflicts in its central states.
"Christians are being killed, we can't deny the fact that Muslims are (also) being killed," Danjuma Dickson Auta, 56, a Christian and community leader in Nigeria's Plateau state, said.
The central state has for years suffered deadly clashes between mostly Christian farmers and Muslim herders over dwindling land, as well as attacks from armed criminals.
Speaking from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state -- the epicenter of Islamist militancy in Nigeria -- Abubakar Gamandi, a Muslim who heads a fishermen's union, told AFP that "even those who sold this narrative of Christian genocide know it is not true".
Jihadists "kill both Muslims and Christians. They have killed far more Muslims than Christians because 95 percent of the population of the areas" targeted by the militants in the state are Muslim-dominated, he told AFP.
"The characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality," Tinubu said on social media Saturday.
With AFP
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