Nigeria Police Kill Man With Car Bomb in Northern Maiduguri

Nigerian police shot and killed a man who tried to drive a car laden with explosives into the main law enforcement compound in the northeastern city of Maiduguri as recruits were being
 The man forced his way through the gate in his Honda car, and on seeing that, the police fired, killing him immediately," Police Commissioner Simeon Midenda told reporters in the city today. "Inside the car were cylinders of explosives."

Nigerian authorities have blamed a militant Islamic group, Boko Haram, which draws inspiration from Afghanistan's Taliban movement, for an upsurge in violent attacks in the mainly Muslim north in the past two years. The group claimed responsibility for a blast on June 16 at police headquarters in the capital, Abuja, which killed at least five people and injured 11.

The incident today "happened as we were selecting about 1,500 recruits,

If the explosion had occurred, it would've been worse than what happened in Abuja."

Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with more than 140 million people, is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. More than 14,000 people died in ethnic and religious clashes in the West African nation between 1999 and 2009, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

In separate incident, seven people were killed by unidentified gunmen overnight in the Barkin Ladi district of central Nigeria, near the city of Jos,

spokesman for the military task force in the area. That region has also been racked by violence between Christian and Muslim ethnic groups in recent years.