Nigeria's Kano rocked by multiple explosions

The unfolding scenes both in Nigeria and in India with Salman Rushdie pulling out of Jaipur literature festival suggest the growing tendency of fundamentalism. The tension in Pakistan also indicates that rise of extremist forces.

Several people are reported to have been killed in a series of co-ordinated explosions in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. The militant Islamist group Boko Haram says it carried out the attacks. The group has been behind a recent campaign of violence in the mainly Muslim north. Authorities in Kano state have imposed an immediate 24 hour curfew. Reports from officials and witnesses indicated that at least seven people had been killed in about six explosions.

A doctor at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital told the BBC that at least five dead bodies had been brought in. The Yusuf Ibrahim Yakasai in Kano says there was panic in the city as plumes of smoke rose into the sky. Kano is reeling from the bombings that began at about 17:00 local time (16:00 GMT) and rocked this ancient holy Muslim city for more than an hour and a half. As plumes of smoke rose over the city, residents fled from the streets in panic not needing the prompt of the 24 hour curfew imposed by the authorities.

A witness at a police station in the south of the city said six gunmen arriving in a car and on a motorbike shot their way into the building before detonating a bomb. Officers fled the scene - some taking refuge in ditches - and it took the military about 30 minutes to respond by which time the gunmen had escaped.

This seems to have been the pattern of attacks at other stations, except at the Bompai headquarters of the state police in the east of the city where a shoot-out between gunmen and security forces was continuing into the evening. The roads are now deserted. Some residents are questioning how the security of so many key police buildings could have been compromised. Our reporter says that as well as the regional police headquarters in the west of the city, police stations near the centre and the south were targeted.

Another witness told that one of the buildings hit was the offices of the secret police the State Security Service (SSS) in the east of the city. A doctor told that some of the wounded included foreigners from an area near the SSS headquarters, where many expatriates particularly Lebanese and Indians - live. There has also been a shoot-out at the headquarters of the state police in the city's eastern district of Bompai, reports say.

Salman Rushdie pulls out of Jaipur literature festival

Author Salman Rushdie has withdrawn from India's biggest literary festival, saying that he feared assassination after influential Muslim clerics protested against his participation. The author had been due to speak at the Jaipur literature festival. He said he had been told by sources that assassins "may be on the way to Jaipur to kill me".

Salman Rushdie sparked anger in the Muslim world with his book The Satanic Verses, which many see as blasphemous. He lived in hiding for many years after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his execution.

The author had been scheduled to speak on the opening day of the five-day Jaipur event which began on Friday, but earlier this week organisers said his schedule had changed and took his name off the list of speakers.

"I have now been informed by intelligence sources in Maharashtra and Rajasthan that paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld may be on their way to Jaipur to 'eliminate' me," Salman Rushdie said in a statement read out at the festival.

The failure of the state to secure Salman Rushdie's protection, many believe, is a shameful indictment of India's politicians and their opportunistic politics of least resistance" "While I have some doubts about the accuracy of this intelligence, it would be irresponsible of me to come to the festival in such circumstances; irresponsible to my family, to the festival audience and to my fellow writers," he added.