Blast rocks Nigeria barracks

An explosion rocked a military barracks in Nigeria’s northern city Kaduna on Tuesday, the latest in a string of blasts in the north of Africa’s most populous nation, an emergency agency and witnesses said.

“NEMA rescue team alerted to explosion at military formations in Kaduna,” the National Emergency Management Agency said in a brief statement. “Yet to confirm the nature of explosion or casualties.”
Two eye witnesses said a car forced its way into the army compound and exploded with the driver inside but the military and NEMA were not able to confirm details.

Radical Islamist sect Boko Haram has killed hundreds this year in bomb and gun attacks in northern Nigeria. Kano, around 200 km north of Kaduna, was the scene of the deadliest attack by the sect, in which 186 people were killed last month.

The military said it killed eight Boko Haram members in a raid on one of the sect’s Kano camps in the early hours of Tuesday. “We also recovered 10 AK-47s (rifles), 106 live ammunitions, 26 gun magazines and seven bags of fertilizer in the hide out,” Kano police commissioner Ibrahim Idris told Reuters.