KANO - Around 30 gunmen rained bombs and gunfire on a police station in Kano, killing a woman in the latest attack blamed on Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria’s second city, residents said.
The northern city has lived in fear amid continued chaos since a coordinated wave of attacks after Muslim prayers on Friday killed at least 185 people, Boko Haram’s deadliest ever onslaught. The converged on the station from two different directions on motorcycles and in a Mercedes car late Tuesday, witnesses said.
The gunmen “were just telling people to move away, they were just here to do their work. They just opened fire on the police station,” a resident who requested anonymity told AFP on Wednesday. The station, in Kano’s densely populated Sheka area, was heavily damaged in the attack: its windows were shattered, the walls were smoke-stained and blood had covered nearly the entire bathroom floor, according to AFP reporters. The holding cells at the back of the station had been opened.  A spokesman for Haram has said last week’s attacks were in response to a refusal by the authorities to release arrested members of the group from custody.