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Hospital: Explosions Kill 24 in Northern Nigeria


A hospital official says the death toll from a series of bombings in the northern Nigerian city of Kano has doubled to 24.

The blasts occurred late Monday near a bar in the predominantly Christian Sabon Gari area of the city.

Earlier reports put the death toll at 12, but a spokesman for Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital in Kano said Tuesday that 24 bodies had been brought to the hospital's mortuary.

He said at least three people were being treated for injuries.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but the military has blamed it on Boko Haram militants.



An explosion at a bus station in the same district earlier this year killed 20 people.

Nigeria has been fighting to subdue Boko Haram, a radical group that wants to impose a strict form of Islamic law in Nigeria's majority-Muslim north.

President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency and sent additional troops to three northeastern states to battle the group in mid-May.

The military announced Tuesday that it has arrested 42 suspected Boko Haram members in the southwestern states of Lagos and Ogun. The crackdown in the north appears to have weakened the group and pushed militants into other parts of the country.

Boko Haram is blamed for thousands of deaths in bombing and shooting attacks since 2009. Rights groups say the military has killed hundreds more, many of them civilians, in efforts to crush the group.
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