Multiple attacks in Nigeria kill at least 143

The series of coordinated attacks were attributed to a radical Islamic group.

A coordinated attack by a radical Islamist sect in north Nigeria's largest city killed at least 143 people, a hospital official said Saturday, representing the extremist group's deadliest assault since beginning its campaign of terror in Africa's most populous nation.

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Soldiers and police officers swarmed Kano's streets as Nigeria's president again promised the sect known as Boko Haram would "face the full wrath of the law." But the uniformed bodies of security agents that filled a Kano hospital mortuary again showed the sect can strike at will against the country's weak central government.

Friday's attacks hit police stations, immigration offices and the local headquarters of Nigeria's secret police in Kano, a city of more than 9 million people that remains an important political and religious center in the country's Muslim north. A suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with powerful explosives outside a regional police headquarters, tearing its roof away and blowing out windows in a blast felt miles away as its members escaped jail cells there.

Authorities largely refused to offer casualty statistics as mourners began claiming the bodies of their loved ones to bury before sundown, following Islamic tradition. However, a hospital official told The Associated Press at least 143 people were killed in the attack.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the death toll to journalists. The toll could still rise, since other bodies could be held at other clinics and hospitals in the sprawling city.

State authorities enforced a 24-hour curfew in the city, with many remaining home as soldiers and police patrolled the streets and setup roadblocks. Gunshots echoed through some areas of the city into Saturday morning.

Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross, said volunteers offered first aid to the wounded, and evacuated those seriously injured to local hospitals. A survey of two hospitals by the Red Cross showed at least 50 people were injured in Friday's attack, he said.

A Boko Haram spokesman using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa claimed responsibility for the attacks in a message to journalists Friday. He said the attack came because the state government refused to release Boko Haram members held by the police.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Saturday that he was "shocked and appalled" by the attacks in the former colony.

"The full horror of last night's events is still unfolding, but we know that a great many people have died and many more have been injured," Hague said in a statement. "The nature of these attacks has sickened people around the world and I send my deepest condolences and sympathies to the families of those killed and to those injured."

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