Toll from Islamist attacks in Kano hits at least 178

Gun and bomb attacks by Islamist insurgents in the northern Nigerian city of Kano before the weekend killed at least 178 people, a hospital doctor said yesterday, underscoring the challenge president Goodluck Jonathan faces to prevent his country sliding further into chaos.

A co-ordinated series of bomb blasts and shooting sprees, mostly targeting police stations on Friday, sent panicked residents of Nigeria’s second biggest city running for cover.

The scale of the carnage makes it the deadliest strike claimed by Boko Haram, an Islamist sect that started out as a clerical movement opposed to western education but has become Nigeria’s biggest security menace.

“We have 178 people killed in the two main hospitals,” the senior doctor in Kano’s Murtala Mohammed hospital said following the attacks, citing records from his own and the other main hospital of Nasarawa. “There could be more, because some bodies have not yet come in and others were collected early.”

The streets were quiet yesterday in Kano, a metropolis of ten million people which is normally buzzing. Churches that would usually be filled with worshippers in the mixed-faith city were largely empty.

Mr Jonathan, a Christian from the south, travelled to Kano yesterday, visiting hospitals to speak to victims.

“Our coming together today is to express our condolence to the good people of Kano over the dastardly acts,” Mr Jonathan said at the palace of the emir, the city’s Muslim figurehead.

“Those causing havoc will never succeed. The federal government will not rest until the perpetrators are brought to book. We will not rest until these terrorists are wiped out,” said Mr Jonathan.