Bomb attacks targeting security forces and gun battles killed at least
162 people in Nigeria’s second-largest city of Kano, with some 80 corpses in a morgue as
bodies littered the streets on Saturday.
A 24-hour curfew was also imposed on Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s
mainly Muslim north and which exploded into violence on Friday evening,
with eight police and immigration offices or residences targeted.
The main newspaper in the north said that a purported spokesman for Islamist
group Boko Haram had claimed responsibility for the violence, saying it was
in response to authorities' refusal to release its members from custody.
Scores of such attacks in Nigeria's north have been blamed on Boko Haram,
though Friday's would be among the group's most audacious and
well-coordinated assaults.
Some 20 huge blasts could be heard in the city as a suicide bomber struck a
regional police office and a car bomb rocked state police headquarters after
the attacker fled and was shot dead, police sources said.
A number of other police posts were targeted, including a secret police building, as well as immigration offices.
Gunshots rang out in several areas, and a local television journalist was among those shot dead as he covered the violence. At least 11 police officers were believed to be among the dead.
An AFP correspondent counted at least 80 bodies in the morgue at Kano’s main hospital, many of them with gunshot wounds. The toll was thought to be higher.
“We are still going around collecting corpses. We have nine but there are more, I don’t know how many yet,” a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency in Kano told Reuters.
“They are mostly police officers ... some died from injuries from explosions, some gunshot wounds.”
Details began to emerge of the attacks, which were said to include at least two suicide bombers.
At state police headquarters, a would-be suicide bomber sought to join the convoy of the police commissioner, the police source said, but jumped out of the car and sought to escape when officers opened fire. He was shot dead, the source said.
A number of other police posts were targeted, including a secret police building, as well as immigration offices.
Gunshots rang out in several areas, and a local television journalist was among those shot dead as he covered the violence. At least 11 police officers were believed to be among the dead.
An AFP correspondent counted at least 80 bodies in the morgue at Kano’s main hospital, many of them with gunshot wounds. The toll was thought to be higher.
“We are still going around collecting corpses. We have nine but there are more, I don’t know how many yet,” a spokesman for the National Emergency Management Agency in Kano told Reuters.
“They are mostly police officers ... some died from injuries from explosions, some gunshot wounds.”
Details began to emerge of the attacks, which were said to include at least two suicide bombers.
At state police headquarters, a would-be suicide bomber sought to join the convoy of the police commissioner, the police source said, but jumped out of the car and sought to escape when officers opened fire. He was shot dead, the source said.
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