ALL AFRICA REPORT: At least 38 people have died across Nigeria after a series of Christmas Eve bomb explosions and attacks on churches.
Police are trying to defuse the situation amid reports that youths have set up barricades and set vehicles on fire.
There were seven blasts in two areas in the central Nigerian city of Jos, killing 36 and injuring more than 70.
Concurrently, three churches were attacked in the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, killing six. There is no evidence that the two attacks are linked: no one has claimed responsibility in either area, but last Christmas Boko Haram, an Islamist sect, was responsible for violence in Maiduguri.
Observers say the situation is especially tense in Jos, where sectarian violence has claimed some 1,500 lives this year.
Jos lies in the middle of a country roughly split between a Muslim north and Christian south. But the attacks claimed adherents of both religions, as they occurred in crowded marketplaces.
The situation in Nigeria, one of the world's largest oil producers, has become increasingly tense as April elections near.
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