KANO, nigeria — A coordinated attack by a radical Islamist sect in northern Nigeria’s largest city killed at least 143 people, a hospital official said Saturday. It represents the extremist group’s deadliest assault since beginning its campaign of terror in Africa’s most populous nation.
Soldiers and police officers swarmed Kano’s streets as Nigeria’s president again promised the sect, known as Boko Haram, would “face the full wrath of the law.” But the uniformed bodies of security agents that filled a Kano hospital mortuary again showed the sect can strike at will against the country’s weak central government.
The attacks Friday hit police stations, immigration offices and the local headquarters of Nigeria’s secret police in Kano, a city of more than 9 million people that remains an important political and religious center in the country’s Muslim north.
A suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with powerful explosives outside a regional police headquarters, tearing its roof away and blowing out windows in a blast felt miles away as its members escaped jail cells there.
Authorities largely refused to offer casualty statistics as mourners began claiming the bodies of their loved ones to bury before sundown, following Islamic tradition. However, a hospital official told The Associated Press at least 143 people were killed in the attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to release the death toll to journalists.
Authorities enforced a 24-hour curfew in the city, with many remaining home as soldiers and police patrolled the streets and set up roadblocks. Gunshots echoed into Saturday morning.
A Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message to journalists Friday. He said the attacks came because the state government refused to release Boko Haram members held by police.
Boko Haram recently said it would target Christians living in Nigeria’s north, but Friday’s attacks saw its gunmen kill many Muslims. In a recent video posted to the Internet, Imam Abubakar Shekau, a Boko Haram leader, warned it would kill anyone who “betrays the religion” by being part of or sympathizing with Nigeria’s government.
