Gunmen have attacked a police station with explosives and automatic weapons in Kano, Nigeria’s second most populated city, and blasts hit Maiduguri, the base of a radical Islamist group.
A senior police officer said on Monday that the police station in Kano’s Sharada neighbourhood had been burned down by attackers armed with explosives, who also shot one officer in the leg.
The Boko Haram group has claimed to have carried out a series of recent attacks in Africa’s most populous nation, including coordinated gun and bomb assaults on January 20 in Kano that killed at least 185.
“I had just arrived home in time for the curfew when I heard an explosion coming from around the police station. Shortly, gunshots followed. From what I heard it sounded like a shootout,” said Bala Salisu, 46, from Kano’s Sharada district.
A pharmacy in a market area in the remote northeastern city of Maiduguri, Boko Haram’s heartland, was also blown up, witnesses said.
Boko Haram is waging a low level insurgency against the government and says it wants to impose Islamic law across the country of 160 million people split evenly between Muslims and Christians.
Nigerian secret service sources said they arrested Abu Qaqa, the purported spokesman for the group, on Wednesday although a man claiming to be him telephoned journalists from Maiduguri to deny it.
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