Gunmen hurled explosives and fired at a police station and a nearby bank in Bauchi town Monday in another of daily attacks blamed on Islamist sect Boko Haram, witnesses said.
The attack in Jama’are, a traditional emirate and town in the north of Bauchi state, occurred 24 hours after a similar assault in another northern Nigerian town in which three policemen were killed.
Residents said a large number of gunmen were involved in the attack, but were unclear about casualties.
“They arrived in cars and headed straight to the police station and a nearby bank, shooting and throwing explosives,” said Tijjani Khalifa by phone from the town.
He said residents quickly moved indoors on hearing the sound of the explosions and gunshots.
“We don’t know if there are casualties because everybody is at home,” said another resident Muktar Dan-Abba.
Members of Boko Haram are thought to rob banks to fund their activities.
No officials were immediately available for comment.
Bauchi borders and lies to the north of Plateau, whose capital Jos was targeted by a suicide bomber on a church during Sunday service.
The Jos attack killed three people while reprisal riots that followed the attack left another three dead.
Boko Haram claimed to have been behind the church attack where a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car and blew it up metres away from a church hall.
Violence blamed on the group, whose goals remain largely unclear, has since mid-2009 claimed more than 1,000 lives, including more than 300 this year alone, according to AFP and rights groups.
The sect has previously said it wants to create an Islamic state in Nigeria’s deeply impoverished north.
Three police corporals were killed Sunday night and two other policemen wounded when gunment threw explosives and opened fire on a police station in Shuwa village of Adamawa state, northern Nigeria, state police commissioner Adelere Chinaba said.
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