Nigeria: Homemade Bomb Target Bus, 2 Police Shot Dead

KANO, Dec 05, (AFP): Attackers threw homemade bombs at a bus, a blast went off near a police station and two policemen were shot dead in a spate of attacks in the Nigerian city of Kano, officials said on Wednesday.

It was not clear who was behind the violence which began on Tuesday in Kano, the largest city in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north, though Islamist extremist group Boko Haram has carried out scores of such attacks.

It was not clear if the three incidents were connected. At least three people were also wounded. Two men hurled homemade explosives at a bus said to be loaded with passengers, wounding two people and damaging the vehicle, a military spokesman said.

"Two IEDs were thrown at the bus which exploded and injured the driver and one other person in the vehicle," Lieutenant Iweha Ikedichi told AFP.

He said windows in the bus were shattered and one of its wheels burst, adding that no arrest has been made.

Later Tuesday near the scene of the bus attack, gunmen shot dead two policemen directing traffic at a roundabout.

"We lost two mobile policemen in an attack by some gunmen," a senior security source told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the incident, adding that the assailants later fled.