Nigeria attack: Over 100 reportedly dead as bombs, gunmen target crowded mosque in city of Kano

Over 100 people have been killed in a suicide bomb and gun attack at a mosque in north Nigeria's biggest city of Kano, witnesses say.

One rescue official said at least 120 people were dead and another 400 injured after the attack on Friday.

"Those figures are going to climb," the official said.

A police spokesman in Kano declined to make any immediate comment on the number of casualties.

National police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu said after the assailants blew themselves up, the remaining "gunmen opened fire on those who were trying to escape".

"These people have bombed the mosque," Chijjani Usman, a local reporter who had gone to the mosque in the old city for prayers himself, said.

"I am face to face with people screaming."

The mosque is adjacent to the palace of the emir of Kano, the second highest Islamic authority in Africa's most populous country, although the emir himself, former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi, was not present.

"(The) bombs were planted in the courtyard to the mosque and they went off simultaneously," a security source who declined to be named said.

A staff member at the palace who also witnessed the attack said: "After multiple explosions, they also opened fire. I cannot tell you the casualties because we all ran away."

No one claimed immediate responsibility but the attack is suspected to have been carried out by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram.

Boko Haram is a Sunni jihadist movement whose name means "Western education is forbidden".

Since 2009 it has fought to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate under strict sharia law.

Boko Haram regards the traditional Islamic religious authorities in Nigeria corrupt, self-serving elite who are too close to the secular government.

The insurgents have killed thousands in gun and bomb attacks on churches, schools, police stations, military and government buildings, and even mosques that do not share their radical Islamist ideology.

Boko Haram insurgents main suspects

The insurgency has displaced more than one million people during its campaign focused on Nigeria's northeast, the Red Cross said, an increase on a September UN refugee agency estimate of 700,000.

Islamic leaders sometimes shy away from direct criticism of Boko Haram for fear of reprisals.

But Mr Sanusi, angered by atrocities such as the kidnapping of 200 schoolgirls from the village of Chibok in April, has been increasingly vocal.

He was quoted in the local press as calling on Nigerians this month to defend themselves against Boko Haram.

During a broadcast recitation of the Koran he was reported to have said:

"These people, when they attack towns, they kill boys and enslave girls.

"People must stand resolute ... They should acquire what they can to defend themselves.

"People must not wait for soldiers to protect them."

Persisting insecurity is dogging president Goodluck Jonathan's campaign for re-election to a second term in February 2015.

He has asked parliament for approval to extend an 18-month-old state of emergency in the northeast.

Friday's attack came a day after a roadside bomb tore through a bus station near a busy junction in the northeast, killing 40 people including five soldiers.

Reuters/AFP