Gunmen riding on motorcycles have killed a prominent politician in Nigeria's second city of Kano, officials said Sunday amid a wave of similar shootings blamed on a radical Islamist group.

Boko Haram insurgents have attacked scores of political leaders and other symbols of authority in Nigeria's restive north. A police source, who confirmed the killing, said the group may be responsible for the latest violence.

Gunmen have killed a policeman and wounded another in a raid on a police station in a town in northern Nigeria's Bauchi state, a police officer said on Sunday, the latest violence in the volatile region.

The gunmen launched the attack late Saturday in the town of Itas, about 200 kilometers (130 miles) from the state capital Bauchi, hurling explosives into the police station and opening fire on policemen, leading to an hour-long shootout.

Explosions and gunfire rocked a town in Nigeria's restive northeast on Tuesday and prompted a military deployment, but there were no immediate reports of casualties, residents and the army said.

The military said troops had deployed to the town of Gashua, located in Yobe state, where the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram has previously carried out waves of deadly attacks.

Gunmen with explosives attacked a police station, a primary school and two cellphone towers in a town in Nigeria's restive northeast early Sunday and set them ablaze, the military and residents said.

"We heard that there were some attacks in Fika by suspected Boko Haram terrorists. They attacked two telecommunication masts, a police station and a primary school," Lazarus Eli, military spokesman in Yobe State, told Agence France Presse.

Nigerian security forces stormed the hideout of the kidnappers of a Turkish national in oil-rich Rivers State and killed 14 of them in a shootout, police said Saturday.

"The hoodlums were shot dead during a gun battle with the security agents in their camp in Kaani community in Ogoni land," state police spokesman Ben Ugwuegbulam told Agence France Presse of the incident on Friday.

Gunmen have killed three people including a fire service chief in Nigeria's restive northeastern state of Borno in the latest such attack blamed on the Boko Haram Islamists, police and residents said Saturday.

The attack on the Damboa local government office, around 90 kilometers south of the volatile city of Maiduguri, happened late Friday, they said.

Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine has said it is prepared to distance itself from al-Qaida's North Africa branch, a newspaper said on Saturday, a day after sending a delegation to Algiers for peace talks.

Ansar Dine's leader Iyad Ag Ghaly "would be ready to officially distance himself from AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb) and play the 'democracy' game," El-Watan reported, citing an Algerian official.

Nigeria said Friday that it is willing to end the Boko Haram insurgency through dialogue after a man claiming to represent the Islamists declared they were open to peace talks.

Abu Mohammed Ibn Abdulaziz, who spoke to journalists in the northeastern city of Maiduguri on Thursday by teleconference, identified himself as a senior Boko Haram leader but his credibility is in question.

Nigerian security forces have committed massive rights violations including summary executions in trying to crush the insurgency by the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, Amnesty International said Thursday.

In a report, the London based rights groups charged Nigeria's military with carrying out extra-judicial killings and showing "little regard for the rule of law or human rights" in its campaign against Boko Haram.

Seven crew members of an anchor handling ship kidnapped last month by attackers who stormed their vessel off Nigeria have been released, French company Bourbon said on Thursday.

Nigeria's military said it played a role in the release of the six Russian and one Estonian sailors although a statement from the Marseilles-based firm gave no details of the circumstances including whether or not a ransom had been paid.