Gunmen Kill 4 Cops In Kano

MD Abubakar, Police IG.

MD Abubakar, Police IG.

Unidentified gunmen this morning struck in the city of Kano, Northwest Nigeria.

MD Abubakar, Police IG.

During the attack, four policemen were feared dead while several others were injured.

It was not clear at the time of filing this report if Boko Haram carried out the attack.

According to eyewitness account, the incident happened in the heart of Kano around Gwandu Albasa within the family house of Acting Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Dikko Abubakar.

P.M.NEWS learnt that the slain mobile policemen were part of the guards attached to the IGP’s house.

“The incident happened at about 9 a.m. today. Mobile policemen were strolling on the streets possibly to buy some items when at a junction close to the IGP’s house, gunmen numbering about five disguised in mobile police uniform shot them,” a source told P.M.NEWS.

When contacted on phone, the Kano State Police Command Public Relations Officer, PPRO, ASP Musa Magaji Majiya confirmed the incident but insisted that the attack occurred along BUK road.

“Yes, this morning, at about 8:30 a.m., our men were walking along BUK road, Kano when gunmen on a motor bike attacked and killed two of them,” Magaji said, adding that the police are on the trail of the assailants.

The Kano PPRO could not confirm whether the slain mobile policemen were attached to the IGP’s house.

Though the police spokesman said only two police officers were killed during the attack, eyewitnesses insisted that four policemen were gunned down.

Following the incident, security has been further beefed in the troubled city.

P.M.NEWS correspondent who moved around the city observed helicopters hovering over Kano.

Also on ground were men of the Kano Joint Security Task Force patrolling major streets and others deployed to strategic locations.

There is palpable fear in Kano as a result of the attack.

Also on Wednesday, gunmen believed to be Boko Haram members have killed two policemen in central Nigeria where the radical Islamist sect killed dozens of people on Christmas day, police said Thursday.

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“The gunmen who rode on a motorcycle shot and killed two policemen watching over a highway and sped away,” police spokesman for Niger State Richard Oguche told AFP.

The attack occurred on Wednesday in Niger state’s town of Lapai, west of the Federal Capital Abuja.

He said the gunmen were suspected to be part of a gang that raided a prison and freed 119 inmates in nearby Kogi state last week.

Boko Haram claimed it was behind the jail break to free seven of its detained members.

Authorities said at least 25 of the detainees were later captured.

“We believe the attack was in response to the re-arrest of their comrades they set free in the prison raid,” Oguche said.

He said police had this week recovered three Kalashnikov rifles in Lapai, raising concern that the area is an Islamists hideout.

Attacks blamed on the sect appear increasing around the central Niger state and its environs.

Nearly 50 people were killed in Christmas Day bomb attacks, most of them on St. Theresa’s Catholic Church in Madalla, Niger State which borders the capital Abuja.

Election offices were also bombed in the same state last year.

Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attack, as well as last August’s bombing of the UN headquarters which killed 25 in the capital.

The sect launched an uprising in 2009 put down by a brutal military assault that left some 800 people dead. After going dormant for about a year, it re-emerged with a series of shootings and bomb blasts.

Its attacks had previously been concentrated in the northeast. But a month ago, it launched its deadliest assault on Kano, the country largest city in the north, leaving 185 dead.

—Maduabuchi Nmeribeh/Kano

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