Explosion rips through police headquarters in Nigerian city of Kano

A bomb has ripped through a regional police headquarters in the largest city in Nigeria's Muslim north, tearing away its roof and blowing out windows in a blast felt miles away.

Meanwhile, other explosions could be heard across Kano, Nigeria's second-largest city. Police could not be immediately reached for comment, but the bomb blast bore similarities to other attacks carried out by a radical Islamist group responsible for hundreds of deaths in recent months.

The blast at the police building occurred just after 5pm. Police kept reporters away from the building.

A spokesman for the Nigeria Immigration Service in the capital Abuja said officials in Kano told him the blast shook their nearby office and came from a bomb.

An AP reporter could see a plume of smoke also rising from another neighbourhood in the city as people began fleeing the area.

Another reporter said the explosion was powerful enough to shake his car several miles away.

The explosion occurred as Nigeria faces increasing attacks from the Islamist sect Boko Haram. The sect has carried out increasingly sophisticated and bloody attacks in its campaign to implement strict sharia law across the country. Boko Haram, whose name means "western education is sacrilege", is responsible for at least 510 killings last year alone, according to Associated Press.

So far this year, the group has been blamed for at least 76 killings. That has further inflamed religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria, which has seen ethnic violence kill thousands of people in recent years.

Boko Haram also claimed responsibility for an August suicide car bombing that targeted the UN headquarters in the capital, killing 25 people and wounding more than 100.

In a video released last week, Imam Abubakar Shekau, a Boko Haram leader, said the government could not cope with the threat posed by the group.

Although President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from southern Nigeria, has declared emergency rule in some regions, the sect is blamed for almost daily attacks.

Jonathan has said he believes the sect has infiltrated security agencies and government offices in the country, though he has offered no evidence to back up the claim.
Culled from the guardian.co.uk.