WASHINGTON: The State Department on Thursday ordered the families of US embassy staffers in the Nigerian capital to leave due to heightened fears of a terrorist attack as it repeated a warning for all Americans to reconsider traveling to any part of the country and not to visit Abuja at all.
The announcement came just two days after the department said it would allow nonessential personnel at the embassy in Abuja to depart voluntarily due to elevated security concerns. It did not provide details but the change suggested the US has indications that an attack may be imminent.
“The department (has) ordered the departure of family members of US government employees from Abuja due to the heightened risk of terrorist attacks there,” it said in a revised travel advisory for Nigeria.
Nigeria has battled an Islamic insurgency in its northeast for more than a decade, but attacks have been rare in Abuja. In 2011, Islamic extremists linked to the Boko Haram group targeted the United Nations building there with a car bomb, killing 21 people.
The US embassy in Abuja has been warning since Sunday about an “elevated risk of terror attacks” in the city, saying that possible targets include government buildings, places of worship and other public places. It has urged Americans there to avoid all nonessential movements and crowds.
The British mission in Nigeria has issued similar alerts.
Nigeria’s secret and intelligence police, the Department of State Services, has called for calm and has advised that “necessary precautions” are being taken to prevent such attacks.
US diplomats’ families told to leave Nigeria’s capital amid security threats
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US diplomats’ families told to leave Nigeria’s capital amid security threats
- It did not provide details but the evacuation suggested the US has indications that an attack may be imminent
- Nigeria has battled an Islamic insurgency in its northeast for more than a decade
Russian minister visits Cuba as Trump ramps up pressure on Havana
- The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba
HAVANA: Russia’s interior minister began a visit to ally Cuba on Tuesday, a show of solidarity after US President Donald Trump warned that the island’s longtime communist government “is ready to fall.”
Trump this month warned Havana to “make a deal,” the nature of which he did not divulge, or pay a price similar to Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by US forces in a January 3 bombing raid that killed dozens of people.
Venezuela was a key ally of Cuba and a critical supplier of oil and money, which Trump has vowed to cut off.
“We in Russia regard this as an act of unprovoked armed aggression against Venezuela,” Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Russian state TV Rossiya-1 of the US actions after landing in Cuba.
“This act cannot be justified in any way and once again proves the need to increase vigilance and consolidate all efforts to counter external factors,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba.
Russia and Cuba, both under Western sanctions, have intensified their relations since 2022, with an isolated Moscow seeking new friends and trading partners since its invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba needs all the help it can get as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and now added pressure from Washington.
Trump has warned that acting President Delcy Rodriguez will pay “a very big price” if she does not toe Washington’s line — specifically on access to Venezuela’s oil and loosening ties with US foes Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
On Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Havana, Victor Koronelli, wrote on X that Kolokoltsev was in Cuba “to strengthen bilateral cooperation and the fight against crime.”
The US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, meanwhile, met the head of the US Southern Command in Miami on Tuesday “to discuss the situation in Cuba and the Caribbean,” the embassy said on X.
The command is responsible for American forces operating in Central and South America that have carried out seizures of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil and strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
- Soldiers killed -
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the revolution that swept communist Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
Havana and Moscow were close communist allies during the Cold War, but that cooperation was abruptly halted in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
During his first presidential term, Trump walked back a detente with Cuba launched by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them assigned to Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the US strikes that saw the Venezuelan strongman whisked away in cuffs to stand trial in New York.
Kolokoltsev attended a memorial for the fallen men on Tuesday.
