Abuja: Suspected members of a radical
Islamist sect carried out bomb attacks and shootings targeting
the police headquarters and a mosque in two Nigerian cities,
killing 17 people, police and media report said on Saturday.
The suspected Boko Haram assailants besieged the police
headquarters in north-eastern city of Gombe, killing 12 people,
including officers, police said.
Through coordinated gun and bomb assaults, the attackers
tried to break into a prison in a failed attempt to free the
inmates.
It has accused the authorities of illegally holding many
of their members in prisons and have demanded their release.
In the second incident, at least five worshipers were
gunned down inside a mosque yesterday evening in the country's
second largest city Kano, Daily Trust reported.
Boko Haram has been waging a bloody insurgency to install
an Islamic government and Sharia rule in Nigeria.
It has carried out a wave of bomb attacks and shootings
across the the country, including the January 20 multiple
terror attacks in Kano that killed 185 people, including an
Indian from Gujarat.
A suicide bomb attack by the group at the United Nations
headquarters in Abuja in July last year killed 26 person.
Last Saturday, suspected gunmen from the Boko Haram shot
dead a cleric and local politician in north-eastern city of
Maiduguri.
Nigeria, with a population of 150-million, has large
number of Muslim and Christian population. Muslims predominant
in the north of the country while Christians mostly live in
the South.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, February 25, 2012, 09:19