Nigeria violence: Scores dead after Kano blasts

The aftermath of a series of blasts in Kano

Co-ordinated attacks by Islamist militants in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on Friday killed at least 120 people, witnesses and reports say.

Aid workers said dozens of bodies had been recovered from the streets, and hospital records seen by reporters said 120 corpses had been admitted.
Police stations and official buildings were targeted in several bombings. Militants from the Boko Haram group said they carried out the attacks.
A 24-hour curfew is in place in Kano.
Police have so far confirmed only seven deaths, but eyewitnesses said they had seen bodies littering the streets and being loaded into vehicles.
Wave of attacks A BBC reporter in Kano said he had counted 150 bodies in the mortuary of the city's main hospital.

The AP news agency said its reporter in Kano had been shown hospital records documenting 120 deaths in Friday's violence.

And an unnamed Red Cross source told the AFP news agency that their tally for the numbers of bodies removed from the streets stood at 121.
Boko Haram, which loosely translates from the local Hausa language as "Western education is forbidden", has been behind a string of attacks in recent years.
The group formed in 2002 and campaigned for Islamic law to be established across Nigeria, whose population is split between the largely Muslim north, and the south where Christianity and traditional beliefs predominate.
It first hit the headlines in 2009 when a spate of attacks by its followers on police and government buildings in the city of Maiduguri led to a crackdown in which hundreds died.
More recently, the group has launched bomb attacks on churches, drive-by shootings on government targets and other attacks across northern Nigeria, killing scores and forcing many more to flee.
But the Kano attacks now appear to be the group's most deadly co-ordinated assault.

The police said in a statement that four police stations around the city, the headquarters of the State Security Service (SSS), as well as passport and immigration offices had been targeted.

There was also a shoot-out at the headquarters of the state police in the city's eastern district of Bompai, reports said.
One local man, Andrew Samuel, described the scene of one blast: "I was on the roadside and I just heard a 'boom'. As I came back, I saw the building of the police headquarters crashing down and I ran for my life."
Witnesses said the bomber who attacked one of the police stations pulled up outside the building on a motorbike, dismounted and ran inside holding a bag.
Some unconfirmed reports have claimed suicide bombers carried out some of the attacks.

The BBC's Mark Doyle, in Kano, says he has seen one police station with its roof completely burnt off, though it was not clear whether this was caused directly by an explosion or by fire.
He says the atmosphere is nervous, and a large crowd outside the police station quickly dispersed when soldiers arrived.
Nigeria's Channels TV said in a statement that one of its reporters, Enenche Akogwu, had been killed in the attacks .
It said he had been "shot by unknown gunmen suspected to be members of the Boko Haram sect", outside the state government house.
The wounded were reported to include foreigners from an area near the SSS headquarters, which is home to many expatriates, particularly Lebanese and Indians.
Late on Friday, a Boko Haram spokesman, Abul Qaqa, told journalists that it had carried out the attacks because the authorities had refused to release group members arrested in Kano