Pope Francis

Pope Francis on Sunday condemned the deadly attacks on the Central mosque in Kano, northern Nigeria as an “extremely serious sin against God”, in comments on the final day of his trip to Turkey.

At least 100 people were killed and 135 wounded when two suicide bombers blew themselves up and gunmen opened fire during weekly prayers on Friday at the Grand Mosque in Kano.

Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan has also condemned the attack as a heinous.

President Francois Hollande urged a united front against the “barbarism” of Boko Haram Islamists.

“In Nigeria, an attack that killed more than 120 people coming out of a mosque — that’s what a sect like Boko Haram is capable of, that’s why we still need to fight together, always fight against terrorism,” Hollande said.

“We must unite against barbarism, against the risks posed by fundamentalism, notably in the Sahel, in Africa,” he said at an annual gathering of French-speaking countries hosted this year by Senegal.

The president of neighbouring Cameroon, Paul Biya, also addressed the meeting, saying: “With this sort of adversary there cannot be any compromise. We are facing an organisation of global proportions.”

Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria pledged to send a combined total of 2,800 troops along their shared borders on November 1, but none have yet been deployed.

Jonathan has “directed the security agencies to launch a full-scale investigation and to leave no stone unturned until all agents of terror… are tracked down and brought to justice,” said a statement from his office on Saturday.

The mosque is attached to the palace of Kano’s emir, Muhammad Sanusi II, Nigeria’s second most senior Muslim cleric, who last week made a call at the same mosque urging civilians to take up arms against Islamist extremists Boko Haram.

Sanusi on Saturday returned from abroad to inspect the mosque.

“From all indications, they (the attackers) have been planning this for at least two months,” Sanusi told reporters at the airport without elaborating.

“I have directed that the mosque be washed and cleaned and prayers should continue here,” the emir said.

“We will never be intimidated into abandoning our religion, which is the intention of the attackers.”

The attack, though, was widely seen inside Nigeria as revenge for the emir’s call against Boko Haram.

“It was death and blood all over. People lay dead and others shrieked in horror and pain,” one survivor, Muhammad Inuwa Balarabe, told AFP from his hospital bed on Saturday.

“I was inside the premises of the mosque. As soon as the prayer started, a bomb went off. They just started shooting people,” said the 32-year-old tailor, who received serious burns to his thighs.

Jonathan urged Nigerians “not to despair in this moment of great trial in our nation’s history but to remain united to confront the common enemy”.

“One wonders what kind of religion these people practise,” said survivor Maikudi Musa, who lost a sibling in the blast and saw another badly hurt.

“You can’t justify attacking and killing defenceless people at will in the name of religion.”