Carcass of a burnt car at the Kano fuel station several weeks ago

One of the busiest locations in Kano, known as Filling Parking has been bombed.

The area abuts the popular West African textile market, the Kantin Kwari Market, which is typically packed with crowds of traders, shoppers as well as heavy traffic. Some of the traders come from various West African nations.

Scores of people have been killed and many injured.

“I heard a huge sound coming from the back of my shop along Unity Road. I just closed the shop and tried to leave because it’s not safe,” trader Nura Sadiq said.

“It is true. There has been an explosion at the Kantin Kwari market,” added Kano police spokesman Musa Magaji Majia. “We are on our way now.”

And The chairman of the market, Alhaji Liti Kulkul, said there had been an explosion but did not have further details.

There was no official confirmation of deaths or injuries from the authorities in the city, which was hit on November 29 by a suspected Boko Haram suicide attack at the city’s central mosque.

Two bombers blew themselves up and gunmen opened fire on worshippers, killing at least 120 and injuring 270 others in an attack apparently targeting the influential Muslim Emir of Kano.

The emir, Muhammad Sanusi II, had previously called for civilians to bear arms and defend themselves against the militants, who have been fighting for a hardline Islamic state since 2009.

Kano, the largest city in the north, has been a repeated target for the militants, who have in recent weeks sought to attack locations outside their northeastern heartland.

On December 2012, four people were injured when a bomb went off outside a mosque near the Kantin Kwari market, which is northern Nigeria’s largest for textiles.

That came two years after the market was razed by an overnight fire. More than 500 shops and hundreds of stalls owned by Nigerian, Indian, Chinese and Lebanese traders were destroyed with their goods.

The state governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, and other top political office holders are in Lagos for the national convention of the All Progressives Congress.

More to come