Gunmen
believed to be members of Islamist sect fire on police station in city
of Kano, where 185 people died in attacks last week
A child stands on a burnt-out police truck outside the attacked police station. Photograph: Sunday Alamba/AP
Suspected members of the radical Boko Haram
Islamist sect attacked a police station in the Nigerian city of Kano on
Tuesday – the city in which its co-ordinated attacks killed at least
185 people last week.
According to witnesses, gunmen surrounded the police station, in the Sheka neighbourhood.
They ordered civilians at shops and homes surrounding the station to get off the streets and began chanting "God is great" as they threw homemade bombs into the station and fired guns into the building.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which followed the pattern of others carried out by Boko Haram, including the use of improvised explosives.
On Wednesday, the prison cells of the station stood open and blood could be seen on the floor of the local commander's private bathroom. Investigative files, apparently rifled through, covered the floors, and youths outside waved an officer's uniform.
A crowd of cheering youths jumped up and down on top of a burned-out police truck. Others in the crowd, speaking in the local Hausa language, said they would kill any police officer who returned. Some asked journalists visiting the site whether they were Christians.
Boko Haram, whose name means "western education is sacrilege" in Hausa, wants to implement strict Sharia law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multi-ethnic nation of more than 160 million people split largely into a Christian south and Muslim north.
While the sect has begun targeting Christians in the north, the majority of those killed on Friday appeared to be Muslim, officials said.
Nigeria's weak central government has been unable to stop Boko Haram's increasingly bloody attacks.
According to witnesses, gunmen surrounded the police station, in the Sheka neighbourhood.
They ordered civilians at shops and homes surrounding the station to get off the streets and began chanting "God is great" as they threw homemade bombs into the station and fired guns into the building.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which followed the pattern of others carried out by Boko Haram, including the use of improvised explosives.
On Wednesday, the prison cells of the station stood open and blood could be seen on the floor of the local commander's private bathroom. Investigative files, apparently rifled through, covered the floors, and youths outside waved an officer's uniform.
A crowd of cheering youths jumped up and down on top of a burned-out police truck. Others in the crowd, speaking in the local Hausa language, said they would kill any police officer who returned. Some asked journalists visiting the site whether they were Christians.
Boko Haram, whose name means "western education is sacrilege" in Hausa, wants to implement strict Sharia law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multi-ethnic nation of more than 160 million people split largely into a Christian south and Muslim north.
While the sect has begun targeting Christians in the north, the majority of those killed on Friday appeared to be Muslim, officials said.
Nigeria's weak central government has been unable to stop Boko Haram's increasingly bloody attacks.
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