KANO : Five explosions at a bus park in northern Nigeria's main city of Kano killed at least 25 people on Monday, a Reuters witness said, in an area where Islamist sect Boko Haram is waging an insurgency against the government.
The coordinated bombing came as an audio tape emerged of a man saying he was the father of a family of seven French tourists kidnapped by Boko Haram militants.
Initial reports indicated that two suicide bombers rammed a car packed with explosives into a bus at the New Road station in Sabon Gari, a predominantly Christian neighbourhood in the majority Muslim city.
Several explosions were heard following the initial blast, sparking panic as bloodied bystanders including some with serious injuries fled the scene as soldiers arrived to cordon off the area.
Kano, the largest city in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north, has been repeatedly targeted by group Boko Haram, blamed for killing hundreds in the region since 2009.
“I saw three buses on fire. One of them was fully loaded with passengers waiting to leave the station at the time of the blasts… There are at least 20 dead,” said the rescue official who requested anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to journalists.
“The figure may rise,” he added.
A senior security official in Kano, who also declined to be named, told AFP he believed the death toll was “massive”, describing the figure of 20 as an “understatement”, without giving a precise toll.
Fatima Abdullahi, 30, who had boarded a bus scheduled to head south, said she saw a car with two men inside ram into a nearby bus.
“There was a huge explosion followed by another. The bus went up in flames,” she told AFP at a hospital in Kano where she was being treated for her injuries.
Mechanic Tunde Kazeem, who works at the station, said he saw “people rushing out of the motor park” after the blasts, “some of them with blood on their clothes”.
The security source also said it was likely that suicide bombers carried out the attack, however details were still emerging and the cause had not yet been definitively confirmed.
There was also no immediate claim of responsibility, but the seemingly coordinated attack was likely to be blamed on Boko Haram.
The coordinated bombing came as an audio tape emerged of a man saying he was the father of a family of seven French tourists kidnapped by Boko Haram militants.
On the tape he read out a threat by them to increase kidnappings and suicide bombings in Cameroon, if authorities there detain more of the group's followers.
Boko Haram, which wants to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria, has killed hundreds in gun and bomb attacks since it intensified its insurgency two years ago.
The sect and other related Islamist groups have become a threat to Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer, and Western interests there, and are increasingly menacing its neighbours like Cameroon.
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