Nigerian town of Ganye hit by deadly attacks Published duration 23 March 2013

At least 25 people died when gunmen attacked a prison, a police station, a bank and a bar in an eastern Nigerian town, police said.

The simultaneous attacks took place in Ganye, a remote town near Nigeria's border with Cameroon.

The attacks happened on Friday but the death toll was only reported on Saturday.

No group has said it carried out the attack but police said they suspected Islamist militants Boko Haram.

"We have 25 dead from yesterday's attacks in Ganye which included a chief prison warder, a policeman and a prominent politician," Adamawa state police chief Mohammed Ibrahim was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.

The gunmen - armed with bombs, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades - set free an unspecified number of inmates from the prison, officials said.

Mr Ibrahim said seven people were shot dead in the bar and six near the bank, while others were gunned down either outside their homes or on the streets.

It was not clear how much money had been looted from the bank.

In a separate incident, two suspected suicide bombers died in the northern city of Kano on Saturday when their explosives went off prematurely, police said.

Three policemen were injured in the blast, Kano state police chief Musa Daura said.

Kano was the scene of a suicide car bomb attack at a bus stop last Tuesday that killed more than 20 people.

Boko Haram says its members are fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north.

The group has been blamed for the deaths of some 1,400 people in central and northern Nigeria since 2010.