Bombs, gunfire at crowded central mosque in northern Nigeria’s Kano

[Valin]

Asharq Al-Awsat/Reuters:

Friday, 28 Nov, 2014

 

Kano, Reuters—Gunmen set off three bombs and fired on worshipers at the central mosque of north Nigeria’s biggest city Kano for Friday prayers, witnesses said, an attack that bore the hallmarks of Islamist Boko Haram militants.It was not immediately possible to determine a reliable death toll in the chaotic aftermath of the attack but the area had been densely packed with worshipers. A police spokesman in Kano declined to make any immediate comment.

“These people have bombed the mosque. I am face to face with people screaming,” said Chijjani Usman, a local reporter who had gone to the mosque in the old city for prayers himself.

 

The mosque is adjacent to the palace of the emir of Kano, the second highest Islamic authority in Africa’s most populous country, although the emir himself, former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi, was not present.“Three bombs were planted in the courtyard of the mosque and they went off simultaneously,” a security source who declined to be named said.

A staff member at the palace who also witnessed the attack said: “After multiple explosions, they also opened fire. I cannot tell you the casualties because we all ran away.”Angry youths blocked the mosque’s gates to police, who had to disperse them with tear gas to gain entry.

 

No one quickly claimed responsibility but suspicion quickly fell on Boko Haram, a Sunni jihadist movement whose name means “Western education is forbidden”. Since 2009 it has fought to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate under strict sharia law.

 

(Snip)