After the U.S. military launched airstrikes on sites in northwestern Nigeria on Thursday, President Trump said the targets were Islamic State terrorists “who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.”

But analysts say that the situation on the ground is more complicated.

Sokoto State, which was hit by more than 16 Tomahawk missiles early Friday, is populated overwhelmingly by Muslims, who bear the brunt of terrorist attacks there, according to analysts and groups that monitor conflict. Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto said recently that the area does “not have a problem with persecution” of Christians.

And analysts are divided over the existence of ties between insurgent groups in Sokoto and the Islamic State.

Some analysts say that the violent attackers in Sokoto, who are colloquially known as the Lakurawa, have links to the Islamic State’s Sahel Province branch, which is mostly farther north and west, in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

But other analysts say evidence of those links is inconclusive, as the identity of the Lakurawa group remains very murky. Its militants have operated in Sokoto and other Nigerian states for years, winning popularity by fighting local bandits at first and then turning on the rural population.

Even as the Nigerian authorities have disputed Mr. Trump’s claims about a Christian “genocide,” they have chosen to respond to his threats by cooperating with his administration. Nigeria has taken the opportunity to use U.S. firepower against insurgents that have plagued rural communities in the country’s northwest.

The Nigerian government made it clear on Friday that it was on board with the airstrikes.

“There’s general consensus that we are facing a major threat from terrorism,” Nigeria’s foreign minister, Yusuf Tuggar, said in an interview. “We need to do something fast to bring it to an end.” If that meant partnering with the United States or other countries to carry out strikes, he added, “We’ve always been receptive to that.”

After discussions between the U.S. Department of Defense and Nigeria’s Ministry of Defense, Mr. Tuggar said Secretary of State Marco Rubio called him on Thursday evening. They talked for 19 minutes, during which Mr. Tuggar emphasized that communications about the strikes should not “get bogged down on the issue of religion.” Then, he said he relayed the conversation to Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who approved the strikes.

Alkasim Abdulkadir, a spokesman for Mr. Tuggar, said that Nigeria had also provided American forces with intelligence for the airstrikes.

The strikes were “meant to deter further operations of bandits in that area,” Mr. Abdulkadir said. “Air power is something that they can’t fight against.”

Mr. Tuggar said that there may be further strikes, but only with Nigerian approval.

“It’s going to continue in the same format, and it’s going to be on a needs basis and based on the assessment of the two partners,” he said.

What the strikes immediately achieved is not clear.

A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said on Friday that the location of the strikes was so remote that it might take a few days before American analysts could assess any damage that strikes had caused.

Nigeria’s information minister, Mohammed Idris, said in a post on X that two major Islamic State terrorist enclaves were hit, both in a forest in Tangaza, an area of Sokoto State. He said that they “were being used as assembly and staging grounds” by militants working “to plan and execute large-scale terrorist attacks within Nigerian territory.”

Mr. Idris also said that 16 GPS-guided munitions were fired by MQ-9 Reaper drones launched from a Navy warship in the Gulf of Guinea. But those drones cannot be launched from ships — and his claim contradicted the U.S. military official’s account that Tomahawk missiles were fired.

Shafi’u Aliyu Jabo, 35, a resident of Jabo, described in an interview hearing a strike in the middle of the night.

“We heard a booming sound like that of an aircraft, coming from the western part of the town and going east,” he said. “Then a sound like a siren, followed by a powerful air force that nearly shifted the roofs of our houses.”

He said that nearby residents, thinking an aircraft had crashed, rushed to a nearby farm, where they found pieces of ordnance. A farmer’s hut had been set on fire, but nobody was hurt, he said. He added that he did not know of any terrorist camps in the area.

Nigeria is home to hundreds of millions of Muslims and Christians, and Sokoto State is home to the sultan of Sokoto, the spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslim population.

Last month, Mr. Trump threatened to strike Nigeria or send troops there if the government did not “move fast” to stop what he has called a “genocide” against Christians in the country.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is racked by widespread, complex violence against Muslims and Christians alike, and the Nigerian government has rejected Mr. Trump’s characterization. But it also sent a delegation to Washington to speak with American officials about security cooperation.

The strikes would be likely to resonate with some American Christians and political allies of Mr. Trump who have amplified the narrative that Christians in Nigeria are being singled out for persecution, analysts said.

“Is the attack against ISIS in Nigeria connected to a broader counterterrorism campaign? Or are these strikes intended to assuage Christians in the United States that form part of the president’s base?” said Colin P. Clarke, executive director of the Soufan Center, an intelligence and consulting firm in New York, in an email to The New York Times.

“I’m all for combating ISIS in Africa, but the raison d’être shouldn’t be ideological or religious,” Mr. Clarke added. “The U.S. should be dismantling the ISIS threat in Africa because it poses a national security risk to American interests.”

Still, some in Nigeria were puzzled by the choice to strike in Sokoto State.

Analysts say that the terrorist group in Nigeria with the best documented links to the Islamic State is in northeastern Nigeria, on the other side of the country from Sokoto State. That group, Islamic State West Africa Province, or ISWAP, splintered off from Boko Haram, another jihadist group.

“If the bomb had been dropped in Sambisa Forest, nobody would be surprised,” said Kabir Adamu, an analyst with a private security consulting firm, referring to an area of northeastern Nigeria that was taken over by Boko Haram and later by ISWAP. “Because everybody kind of knows that’s one of the strongholds of the target group.”

Terrorist groups operating in the Sahel, an enormous region across north-central Africa, have recently been moving down into Nigeria’s northern border area and to neighboring coastal countries like Benin and Togo, analysts say.

The groups have been operating mainly in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, turning the Sahel into a global terrorism hot spot responsible for over half of all terrorism-related deaths last year, according to the United Nations. Analysts say their encroachment farther south reflects an ambition to recruit and secure new logistical hubs.