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Nigeria: multiple bomb blasts target Kano mosque Dozens killed in series of bombs at Nigeria mosque
(about 3 hours later)
Dozens of people are feared dead after three bomb blasts near one of the biggest mosques in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, in an attack that bore the hallmarks of Islamist militants Boko Haram. There were scenes of chaos in the centre of northern Nigeria’s main city, Kano, on Friday after three bombs exploded and armed gunmen rampaged through the central mosque.
Witnesses said heavy smoke could be seen billowing into the sky from a long distance away while rescue operations were under way at the bomb site, with the injured and dead being taken away from the scene. The attack, which bore the hallmarks of Islamists Boko Haram, left at least 64 worshippers dead and 126 injured, rescue officials told AFP. A bomb exploded in the Grand Mosque, one of the country’s biggest, at the close of the crowded Friday sermon. Two others detonated at the gates of the adjoining palace, the home of the emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who recently spoke out against Boko Haram at a sermon in the Grand Mosque.
“Two bombs exploded, one after the other, in the premises of the grand mosque seconds after the prayers had started,” Aminu Abdullahi told Agence France-Presse. He said a third bomb went off nearby. At least three gunmen fired into the terrified crowds before security officials arrived, witnesses said. “After multiple explosions, they also opened fire. I cannot tell you the casualties because we all ran away,” a palace staff member told Reuters.
At least 35 people died, a deputy police commissioner told reporters. But in a sign of how growing insecurity in the runup to 2015 polls has stoked tensions, the crowd turned on the policemen and began pelting them with stones, accusing them of failing to protect civilians. “We are frustrated because it is as if we are not safe anywhere in Nigeria anymore,” one worshipper, Bello, told the Guardian.
Hajara Tukur, who lives nearby, said the police began firing weapons in the chaos that followed the blasts, as worshippers began running for safety. The soldiers opened fire to disperse the people but killed several others in the process, according to Mohammed Gwadabe, another Kano resident. Shocked and shaken, he returned home to find two of his neighbours had died of gunshot wounds. “They were shot outside the mosque and after the original attackers had gone,” he said, his voice breaking.
The mosque is next to the palace of the emir of Kano, the second highest Islamic authority in Africa’s most populous country, although the emir himself, Lamido Sanusi, was not present. More than 3,000 people have been killed and a million displaced this year by Boko Haram. The Islamists say they are fighting to carve an Islamic state in religiously mixed Nigeria, but their victims are Muslims as frequently as Christians.
Preaching at the grand mosque last week, the emir urged northerners to take up arms against Boko Haram, and cast doubt on the military’s ability to protect civilians and end the insurgency. Earlier this month, Sanusi preached a sermon at the Grand Mosque in which he urged northerners to take up arms against Boko Haram and cast doubt on the military’s ability to protect civilians against the Islamists. “These people, when they attack towns, they kill boys and enslave girls… People must stand resolute. They should acquire what they can to defend themselves. People must not wait for soldiers to protect them.”
Nigeria is home to more than 80 million Muslims, most of whom live in the north. A security source said a group of civilian vigilantes had alerted the police to a bomb planted in a busy market in Maiduguri, the capital of north-eastern Borno state. The bomb was successfully defused shortly before the Kano explosions happened, the source said. At least 30 people were killed by a suicide bomb in the city earlier this week.
Sanusi, who was named emir earlier this year, is a prominent figure in his own right, having previously served as the chief of Nigeria’s central bank, where he spoke out against government fraud. Boko Haram regards the traditional Islamic religious authorities in Nigeria with disdain and has gunned down several clerics it disapproves off. The militants have attempted to assassinate Sanusi’s predecessor and, earlier this year, another traditional ruler, the 72-year-old emir of Gwoza, was killed.
An attack on Sanusi could inflame tensions in Kano, Nigeria’s second city and most populous in the north. The militant’s attacks have mainly been concentrated in its north-eastern base. A renewed military operation last year pushed the group into the hinterlands, from where it began carrying out raids on remote villages, including Chibok where 249 girls were kidnapped in May.
Boko Haram regards the traditional Islamic religious authorities in Nigeria with disdain, considering them a corrupt, self-serving elite that is too close to the secular government. But Kano city, the bustling cosmopolitan hub of the north, has been repeatedly attacked. Earlier this month, a suicide bomb attack at a petrol station killed six people, including three police officers. A suicide bomb attack on a college killed 17 students in September.
It has repeatedly attacked Kano, including on 14 November when a suicide bomb attack at a petrol station killed six people, including three police. The emir of Kano
The extremists have a record of attacking prominent clerics and in July 2012, a suicide bomber killed five people leaving Friday prayers at the home of the Shehu of Borno in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri. In a country where godfathers and rich backers shape politics, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has often said being a prince enabled him to speak his mind freely. The former central bank chief-turned-whistleblower was born to northern Nigeria’s Fulani royal family, making him an heir apparent to the emir of Kano, the second most powerful Muslim monarchy in the nation home to Africa’s biggest Muslim population.
The Shehu is Nigeria’s number three Islamic leader. After serving as one of Africa’s most respected central bankers, he swapped business suits for a royal rawani (turban) this June, ascending the throne of one of West Africa’s oldest and grandest former Islamic empires.
In Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state, civilian vigilantes said on Friday they had discovered a suspected remote-controlled device planted in the Gamboru Market area of the city. In the mid 1990s, Sanusi quit a highly-paid banking job in order to take up Arabic and Islamic studies in Sudan. He returned to Nigeria and first made waves by wading into a debate over the introduction of sharia law in 12 Muslim majority states. Sanusi wrote a series of newspaper articles arguing against sharia, an issue which he saw as derailing the more urgent challenge of poverty and corruption.
It was successfully defused by a police bomb squad but as the bomb was being made safe, another device exploded nearby. There were no casualties, as the area had been cordoned off. His modernist outlook puts him directly in the firing line of Boko Haram, who claim to be fighting to impose a caliphate ruled by their hardline interpretation of sharia law.
“Our assumption is that the bombs were planted ahead of Friday prayers in the mosque just nearby,” civilian vigilante Babakura Adam said. The same outspokenness marked his five-year tenure as central bank chief. With a penchant for pinstripe suits and red bow ties, his tendency to speak his mind earned him fans, ruffled elite feathers and ultimately cost him his position.
Monetary policy meetings in which he decried wasteful government spending culminated in a graft probe that found the state-run oil company had plundered $20bn (£13bn). The ensuing very public spat between Sanusi and president Goodluck Jonathan led to him being axed from the job in February.
“If you’re a prince, you don’t have fear of power. You are not intimidated by authority because you’ve grown up around it,” Sanusi told Reuters at the time.
Since being crowned in June, he faces a new enemy. While some Muslim leaders occasionally hold prayers for peace, few risk referencing Boko Haram directly. Neither the militant’s slayings of other religious rulers nor the attempted assassination of his predecessor appear to have dampened Sanusi’s determination to speak out. He has began holding weekly sermons at the Grand Mosque – the spiritual centre of Kano – and last week urged northerners to take up arms against Boko Haram.
In Friday’s attack, the enemy responded in their signature blood-soaked style. And while Sanusi is unlikely to be fazed, the high death toll will remind him that ordinary civilians are trapped between two powerful forces.