Gunfights between radical Islamists and police echoed out across northern Nigeria late Monday in the latest flare up of sectarian violence in the country.

A powerful blast rocked a police station followed by sustained gunfire in the city of Kano, Nigeria's second biggest urban center.

According to news agency AFP, one police officer was shot in the leg during the attack, believed to have been carried out by the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram, though no group has yet officially claimed responsibility.

One eyewitness from Kano's Sharada district reported the explosion "coming from around the police station. Shortly, gunshots followed. From what I heard it sounded like a shootout."

Kano lies in Nigeria's Muslim north

Another witness said: "We all panicked and it became chaotic as people on cars and on motorbikes jostled to escape the area."

Militants also blew up a pharmacy in a market area in the remote north-eastern city of Maiduguri, Boko Haram's heartland, witnesses said.

Boko Haram is waging a low-level insurgency against the government of President Goodluck Jonathan and says it wants to impose sharia law across the country of 160 million people split evenly between Muslims and Christians.

The attack comes less than three weeks after Boko Haram launched an audacious assault in Kano, killing more than 185 people and forcing authorities to impose a curfew during daylight hours.

dfm/ai (AFP, Reuters, AP)