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.
