Car bomb rips into Kano, Nigeria

A car bomb exploded in a Christian neighborhood of mainly Muslim Kano, Nigeria's second most populous city, on Sunday night, killing at least four people, police said. Five people were wounded.

"I heard a loud blast, and there was a lot of smoke. Soldiers came in to cordon off the place, and ambulances were rushing people to hospital," said Abdul Dafar, a witness to the blast who lives a block from the scene, adding that he saw four dead people in the aftermath.

Kano police spokesman Musa Majiya said the bomber struck Gold Coast Street in the Sabon Gari neighborhood.

Multiple blasts in Sabon Gari — the name means "strangers' quarters" in the Hausa language — killed at least 24 people last July, and a suicide bomber drove a car laden with explosives into the neighborhood's busy bus station that March, killing at least 25 people.

Previous explosions in Nigeria have been blamed on the group Boko Haram, which claimed responsibility for two explosions last month in Abuja, the capital, in the center of the country, that killed more than 120 people and wounded more than 200.

Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan described Boko Haram as West Africa's al-Qaeda on Saturday in Paris, where regional leaders met France's President François Hollande to discuss how to tackle the growing threat posed by the group.

Boko Haram grabbed world headlines with abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls a month ago from a remote village in the northeast. Britain, the United States and France have pledged to help rescue them.

Outrage over the kidnapping has prompted Jonathan, criticized for his slow response to the crisis, to accept U.S., British and French help in the hunt for the girls.

Boko Haram has frequently attacked Sabon Gari, where liquor stores are a cause of friction with Kano's Islamic police.

The area has for decades housed ethnic Igbo traders from the south, who are predominantly Christian. Nigeria's population of 170 million is split roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims.

Wire services