08:15
Two explosions have struck two police stations in a major northwestern Nigerian city in the latest attack to target authorities, witnesses said Monday.
Smoke rose over a compound containing a police station and regional police offices in the city of Sokoto Monday morning.
The head of the regional office, Assistant Inspector General of Police Mukhtar Ibrahim said two people had died in the attack, including "the suicide bomber."
An injured man at Specialist Hospital Sokoto who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter said he saw a car race into the main gate of the compound. He was on a bicycle when the blast went off. He said the impact of the blast threw him off his bicycle and that he hurt his hand in the fall.
An Associated Press reporter heard another blast at the same time about two miles (four kilometers) away. Police then sealed off a road leading to a police station. Witnesses said that the station had also been hit.
It was not immediately clear what the cause if that explosion was or if there were casualties.
A Sokoto state police spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.
The explosions come as Nigeria faces an increasing threat from a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram.
There has also been a spate of recent attacks targeting uniformed officers, some of which has been blamed on the sect.
Air Commodore Sani Ahmed, a Nigerian air force official in Kano, said motorcycle-mounted gunmen killed two air force officers Sunday.
The violence follows a Friday night clash in the northeastern city of Damaturu that left a policeman and a soldier dead.
Yobe state police spokesman Toyin Gbadagesin said police blamed members of Boko Haram for the Damaturu attack.
He said security officers then razed a house believed to be harboring sect members.
Witness Yau Zadawa said gunmen killed a policeman in the northeastern Nigerian city of Bauchi Saturday.
He said two motorcycle-mounted gunmen shot the policeman outside his house late Friday after he had closed from a shift guarding a local politician.
Meanwhile, army spokesman Lt. Col. Sagir Musa said suspected members of the Boko Haram sect shot dead a soldier in Maiduguri, a northeastern city 280 miles (460 kilometers) from Bauchi last week.
He said soldiers killed two of the assailants while fighting back.
Security officials are frequently targeted in violence in Nigeria's arid northeast. They have also been criticized for killing suspects in their attempt to stop spiraling sectarian violence
Posted in: Boko Haram
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