Nigerian Islamists Die in Suicide Blast during Raid

Suspected members of Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamist sect set off a suicide car bomb Saturday during a military raid on their hideout in the northern city of Kano, police said.

The army chief of Kano state Brigadier-General Iliyasu Isa Abba said the explosion was a desperate act aimed at avoiding capture.

"It was a suicide plan so that all of them would go because they knew the security forces were coming that was why they primed the car," he said at the badly-damaged hideout.

The number of deaths was not immediately clear but an AFP journalist saw two bodies in front of the house.

Four women and eight children were found in the building by the Joint Task Force soldiers. They are believed to be relatives of the suspects.

Boko Haram has been blamed for scores of shootings and bomb blasts, mostly in northern Nigeria, which have killed more than 1,000 people since 2009.

It claimed responsibility for an August suicide attack at the U.N. headquarters in the capital Abuja which killed 25 people and for coordinated bombings and shootings in Kano on January 20 which left 185 people dead -- the group's deadliest operation.

The group had initially claimed to be fighting for the creation of an Islamic state in northern Nigeria but its aims and structure have since become less clear.