Kano - Two suicide car
bombers attacked the offices of two mobile phone operators on Saturday
in Nigeria's northern city of Kano, killing themselves but no civilians,
police said.
India's Airtel and South Africa's MTN were the targets.
Islamist sect Boko Haram has previously blown up telephone masts and offices of phone companies
, saying they help the security forces catch its members.
"The
one who hit the Airtel office was shot by military men before the bomb
exploded ... at the MTN office the car rammed into the fence but no
civilians were killed," Ibrahim Idris, the chief of police in Kano, told
Reuters. Both bombs went off.
A military source said one security guard was injured and has been taken to hospital.
MTN and Airtel Nigeria's parent company Bharti Airtel, India's top cellphone operator, gave no immediate comment.
The
national emergency agency confirmed the bombings and said it was not
aware of any civilian casualties. The security forces have played down
the death toll in previous bombings.
At
least 2,800 people have died in fighting in the largely Muslim north
since Boko Haram launched an uprising against the government in 2009,
watchdog Human Rights Watch says.
The
sect wants to impose strict Islamic law on a country of 160 million
people split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims.
The
group has previously targeted churches on Christmas Day and security
has been increased in all the major northern cities, although security
experts say given the scale of Christian worship in Nigeria they cannot
protect everyone.
Kano, Nigeria's
second-largest city after the southern commercial hub Lagos, was the
site of Boko Haram's deadliest attack which killed at least 186 people
in January in coordinated bombings and shootings.
Armed
police have been guarding major churches in Kano this week and
additional police checkpoints have been set up around the
majority-Muslim city, a Reuters witness said.
Police
in Kano said this week that their anti-terrorism squads have been
searching houses and buildings they suspect to be hideouts of criminals
and "terrorists".
Security experts
say they believe Boko Haram is seeking to spark a religious conflict by
targeting Christians in a country where ethnic violence has flared up
periodically in recent years, in some cases killing hundreds in the
space of hours.
A French national
was kidnapped in far northern Nigeria, close to the border with Niger,
this week by people France's intelligence agency said were "an organised
group linked to a terrorist activity".
- Reuters