12 die in Kano Multiple Blasts in Christian Colony

Multiple explosions that blasted a bar and entertainment area in a Christian quarter of Nigeria's northern and mainly Muslim city of Kano killed at least 12 people, the military said Tuesday.

Military Joint Task Force spokesman Lt. Ikedichi Iweha also said "a couple" of people were wounded in Monday night's attack, which he blamed on suspected members of the Islamic extremist Boko Haram network.

But an Associated Press reporter watched security forces ferrying scores of wounded to hospitals after the blasts in the Sabon Gari neighborhood where hundreds of people where drinking, playing snooker and table tennis.

In March, a suicide bomber drove a car loaded with explosives into a bustling bus station in the same area, killing 25 people.

Nigeria is fighting an Islamic uprising by extremists based mainly in the northeast, where the government has declared a state of emergency. Kano city and state are in the northwest and not part of that emergency. Boko Haram, which means "Western education is forbidden," wants to impose Islamic law in all of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation of more than 160 million divided almost equally between Christians who live mainly in the south and Muslims who dominate the north. http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Nigeria-12-die-in-blasts-in-Kano-s-Christian-area-4694855.php