Nigeria's Boko Haram suspected in Kano police attack

LONDON. January 30. KAZINFORM Two civilians have died in an attack on a police station in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, police say; Kazinform refers to BBC.

photo: QAZINFORM

A BBC correspondent says that gunmen stormed the station, throwing explosives and an hour-long shoot-out ensued.

The gunmen are suspected to be Islamist militants from Boko Haram, which recently carried out multiple bomb attacks in Kano, killing 185 people.

Police also say they shot at a bus near another police post on Monday.

There are no details of casualties in this early morning incident, which occurred near the same police station in the city's Mandawari area where an officer was killed on Friday night in another suspected Boko Haram attack.

The BBC's Abdullahi Kaura Abubakar in Kano says the Sunday evening attack on a police station in the Naibawa district, on the outskirts of Kano, happened just before the start of the dusk-to-dawn curfew.

"We are scared. The police and Boko Haram members are battling each other and there is gunfire everywhere," local resident Usman Ibrahim Bello told the Reuters news agency.

The curfew was imposed after the 20 January bombings - the most deadly since Boko Haram began its campaign of violence in 2009.

On Saturday, a Boko Haram spokesman rejected Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan's recent call for open dialogue to end the conflict.

He said it was "impossible" to hold talks, after police said they had killed 11 militants in the group's base in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri over the weekend; Kazinform cites BBC.

To learn more go to www.bbc.co.uk