Gunmen bomb and shoot at mosque worshippers in north Nigeria’s Kano
About 60 are feared dead and 156 wound when Gun exploded bombs and opened fire on worshippers gathered at the central mosque of north Nigeria’s biggest city, Kano.
Reports indicate that the Muslims were observing their Friday prayers at time of the attack, which bore telltale marks of Boko Haram Islamist terror gang.
“These people have bombed the mosque. I am face to face with people screaming,” Reuters cites Chijjani Usman, a local reporter who had gone to the mosque in the old city for prayers himself, to have said.
Other reports say the explosives were packed in two cars stationed near the mosque and the terrorists fell more people by gun than the bomb blasts, as look
, shot indiscriminately at people who we’re running helter-skelter as a result of the explosions.
The mosque is adjacent to the palace of the emir of Kano, the second highest Islamic authority in the country, although the emir himself, former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi, was not present at the time.
According to a
A staff member at the palace who also witnessed the attack said: “After multiple explosions, they also opened fire. I cannot tell you the level of casualties because we all ran away.”
A police spokesman in Kano declined to make any immediate comment. There was also no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion is likely to fall on Boko Haram, which has for five years waged a campaign to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate governed by sharia law.
Boko Haram’s fighters have killed thousands in gun and bomb attacks on churches, schools, police stations, military and government buildings, and even mosques that do not share their radical Islamist ideology. Hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes.
They regard the traditional Islamic authorities in Nigeria with distain, seeing them as a corrupt, self-serving elite that is too close to the secular government.
