Suicide bombers target mobile phone firms in Nigeria

Suicide bombers target mobile phone firms in Nigeria

PanARMENIAN.Net - Two suicide car bombers attacked the offices of two mobile phone operators on Saturday, December 22 in Nigeria's northern city of Kano, killing themselves but no civilians, police said, accoridng to Reuters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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