Fatal Attack Causes Chaos at Mosque in Nigeria KANO, Nigeria - Militants struck the central mosque in one of Nigeria's biggest cities on Friday, intensifying the violence that has swept across the nation's north in recent months. Explosions shook the mosque, in the northern city of Kano, during Friday Prayer, scattering worshipers and sending an enormous plume of black smoke into the air that could be seen for miles. A state deputy police commissioner, Sunusi Lemu, said 35 people had been killed and 150 wounded. But some estimates were far higher, as corpses quickly piled up in hospitals and some still lay on the ground. "I was rushing to attend the mosque for the prayer when I heard a big sound and heavy smoke skyrocketed the sky," said one witness, Ahmed Mohammed Soron Dinki. It was terrible. I saw more than 50 dead bodies on the bare ground of the mosque, and the majority of the dead bodies are kids and their parents. Northern Nigeria has been gripped by an Islamist insurgency for years, but the violence has been especially costly this year, with attacks on schools, markets, crowds watching soccer and entire villages. Kano This week, two suicide bombers, at least one of them a woman, blew themselves up at a crowded market in Maiduguri, another northern city, killing dozens of shoppers and merchants. Two weeks earlier, a suicide attacker disguised as a student detonated a bomb at a boarding school in the north, killing nearly 50 boys and young men. Much of the violence has been attributed to Boko Haram, the militant group that gained international notoriety by kidnapping more than 200 girls from a rural northern school in the spring. Boko Haram killed more than 2,000 civilians in the first six months of 2014, carrying out an estimated 95 attacks, according to Human Rights Watch. The latest explosions took place close to the palace of the emir of Kano, Alhaji Muhammad Sunusi II, who this month had called on Nigerians to resist Boko Haram and to defend themselves from the group. He was not believed to have been at the palace at the time of the attack. The explosions occurred minutes after the start of Friday Prayer, causing pandemonium. The first blast occurred at a roadside, while the other two explosions took place in an open space within the mosque. Two suspects in the attack were said to have been apprehended by people in the mosque. Angry protesters on the streets of Kano accused the police of being negligent by not protecting the population.