A police station in the northern Nigerian city of Kano was attacked by a group of unidentified gunmen on Tuesday, leaving 13 people killed, reports reaching Lagos said.

A regional police spokesman was quoted by the reports as saying that the dead were 12 police officers and a civilian woman. He had no further details about the attackers.

The general elections started in Nigeria last Saturday after cases of violence were reported in the process of election campaigns.

About 28,000 candidates from 50 parties are running for the elections, which consist of two phases, gubernatorial and state assembly elections held last Saturday and the presidential and national assembly elections slated for Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has increased its lead to 26 gubernatorial seats in the House of Assembly elections.

The ruling PDP has seats in the northeast states of Gombe, Taraba, Adamawa, Katsina and Jigawa and Plateau, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Kaduna, Kwara and Niger states in north and central Nigeria.

They also secured the governorship seats in southern states of Delta, Edo, Rivers, Cross Rivers, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom, and also swept the seats in southwest states of Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti andOndo.

In the northwest, the PDP took Kebbi while in the southeast, it took Anambra and Ebonyi.
 
The Action Congress has only Lagos state so far while the All Nigeria Peoples Party swept the states of Borno, Yobe and Bauchi in the northeast as well as Zamfara and Sokoto states in the northwest. The Progressive Peoples Party has Abia state.

Two states, Enugu and Imo, have been void due to alleged irregularities and another election will be conducted in the two states on April 28 while Kano election results is still been awaited.

(Xinhua News Agency April 18, 2007)