At least 10 people have been killed and many more injured in a bomb blast at a Catholic church near the Nigerian capital Abuja, officials say. The blast tore through St Theresa’s Church in Madalla as worshippers gathered for Christmas services. A second explosion shortly afterwards hit a church in the central city of Jos, killing at least one person. An emergency official in Abuja said the authorities there were struggling to cope with the casualties.

 Security has been high after violence between Islamist gunmen and soldiers in northern Nigeria, but the BBC’s Fidelis Mbah in Lagos says no trouble had been expected in the capital. No group has said it carried out the attack, but correspondents say suspicion is likely to fall on the Islamist group Boko Haram – which often targets security forces and state institutions. The group, whose name means “Western education is forbidden”, carried out an August 2011 suicide attack on the UN headquarters in Abuja, in which more than 20 people were killed. Emergency workers ‘attacked’ National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) spokesman Yushau Shuaibu told the BBC that the latest Abuja explosion had happened in the street outside the church. But he said the church – which can hold up to 1,000 people – had been badly affected by the blast, and the number of dead was likely to rise. “We are presently evacuating the dead and the injured, but unfortunately we don’t have enough ambulances,” he told Reuters news agency earlier. Witnesses said windows of nearby houses had been shattered by the explosion. Unconfirmed reports says that emergency responders have been attacked by groups of stone-throwing youths.

Officials at the local hospital said the condition of many of the injured was serious, and they were seeking help from bigger medical facilities. BBC Africa editor Martin Plaut says that the attack in Jos, in Plateau state – which killed at least one policeman and destroyed three vehicles – could have even more serious consequences than the attack in Abuja. The state lies in Nigeria’s so-called Middle Belt, between the mainly Muslim north and Christian south. More than 1,000 have been killed in religious and ethnic violence in Jos over the past two years and our correspondent says there will be fears that the latest attack could spark wider conflict. A string of bomb blasts in Jos on Christmas Eve 2010 were claimed by Boko Haram

BBC New