KANO, Nigeria // At least 109 people were killed and 126 injured yesterday when two suicide bombers blew themselves up and gunmen opened fire during weekly prayers at a mosque of one of Nigeria’s top Islamic leaders.
The attack at the Grand Mosque in Kano, the biggest city in the mainly Muslim north of the country, came just as Friday prayers had got under way.
The mosque is attached to the palace of the emir of Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, Nigeria’s second-most senior Muslim cleric, who just last week urged civilians to take up arms against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
“We have counted about 109 dead bodies at the Murtala general hospital alone, apart from the ones at Nasarawa and Bamalli hospitals,” said Ibrahim Shehu, a nurse at Murtala Mohammed hospital.
A senior rescue official said: “Those figures are going to climb.”
The blasts came after a bomb attack was foiled against a mosque in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri earlier in the day, five days after two female suicide bombers killed more than 45 people in the city.
National police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu said the bombers blew themselves up in quick succession then “gunmen opened fire on those who were trying to escape”.
Mr Ojukwu said he did not know whether the suicide bombers were male or femaleand did not give an exact figure on the number of gunmen.
But he said an angry mob killed four of the shooters in the chaotic aftermath. Worshipper Aminu Abdullahi and local resident Hajara Tukur both said that there were two explosions in quick succession and a third in a nearby road.
The emir of Kano last week told worshippers at the same mosque that northerners should take up arms against Boko Haram, which has been fighting for a hardline Islamic state since 2009.
He also cast doubt on Nigerian troops’ ability to protect civilians and end the insurgency.
The emir, who is thought to be out of the country, is a hugely influential figure in Nigeria, which is home to more than 80 million Muslims.
While no group claimed responsibility for the explosions, Boko Haram has carried out bomb and gun attacks in a five-year campaign to impose Islamic law in Africa’s biggest oil producer.
Officially the emir of Kano is the country’s number two cleric, behind the Sultan of Sokoto, and any attack could inflame tensions in Nigeria’s second city, which is an ancient seat of Islamic study.
Mr Sanusi was named emir earlier this year and is a prominent figure in his own right, having previously served as the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
During his time in charge of the bank, he spoke out against massive government fraud and was suspended from his post in February just as his term of office was drawing to a close.
Boko Haram has repeatedly attacked Kano before. On November 14, a suicide bomb attack at a petrol station killed six people, including three police.
The Islamists have a record of attacking prominent clerics and in July 2012, a suicide bomber killed five people leaving Friday prayers at the home of the Shehu of Borno in Maiduguri.
The Shehu is Nigeria’s number three Islamic leader.
Boko Haram threatened Sanusi’s predecessor and the Sultan of Sokoto for allegedly betraying the faith by submitting to the authority of the secular government in Abuja.
In early 2013, the convoy of Mr Sanusi’s predecessor was also attacked.
* Agence France-Presse and Bloomberg
