By Emele Onu and Mustapha Muhammad
(Updates death toll starting in first paragraph.)
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Bomb blasts in the northern Nigerian city of Kano yesterday killed at least 20 people and wounded another 40, a hospital official said.
"We have 20 dead bodies and 40 wounded receiving treatment" at two hospitals, Bello Dikko, the executive secretary of the Kano state hospitals management board, said today by phone. The dead included journalist Enenche Akogwu, Lagos-based Channels Television said in a statement on its website.
The Boko Haram Islamic group claimed responsibility for the blasts that struck eight government buildings, its spokesman, Abu Qaqa, said by phone. Authorities in Africa's top oil producer blame Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is a sin" in the Hausa language, for a wave of bombings and attacks in the mainly Muslim north and the capital, Abuja, over the past year.
President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in parts of four states in the northeast region on Dec. 31 and set up a special counterterrorism unit within the armed forces after at least 43 people died and 73 were wounded in a Christmas day bombing of a church near Abuja.
Islamic militants pose a worse threat to the country than the 1967-1970 Biafra civil war, Jonathan said on Jan. 8.
The group claimed responsibility for a suicide car-bomb attack on the United Nations building in the capital on Aug. 26 that killed 24 people.
The African Union said today it condemned the attacks in "the strongest terms." The African Union will support the Nigerian government to end all such incidents, its chairman, Jean Ping, said in an e-mailed statement.
--Editors: Karl Maier, Francis Harris
To contact the reporters on this story: Emele Onu in Lagos at eonu1@bloomberg.net; Mustapha Muhammad in Kano at mmuhammad5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net
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