Nigeria – At least 118 people have been killed and dozens wounded in two bomb blasts that caused buildings to collapse in a crowded market area of the Nigerian city of Jos, authorities say.

The massive car bombs on Tuesday, just a few minutes apart, were the latest in a deadly wave of bombings across Nigeria over the past few weeks, raising fears that the extremist group Boko Haram has become powerful enough to expand its terrorist operations far outside its traditional strongholds and into new regions of the country. (link)

Remember, this falls on the heels of over 300 killed last week, and 200 killed and/or wounded in a bombing the week just prior to that.

JOS, Nigeria — Two car bombs exploded at a bustling bus terminal and market in Nigeria’s central city of Jos on Tuesday, and police said at least 46 were killed and dozens were wounded.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the twin car bombs, but they bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group.

The second blast came half an hour after the first, killing some of the rescue workers who had rushed to the scene that was obscured by billows of black smoke.

Dozens of bodies and body parts were covered in grain that had been loaded in the second car bomb, witnesses said. A Terminus Market official said he helped remove 50 casualties, most of them dead. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to give information to reporters.

“It’s horrifying, terrible,” said Mark Lipdo of the Stefanos Foundation, a Christian charity based in Jos., who could smell burning human flesh.

Photographs show a woman’s body, legs blown off, on the edge of an inferno consuming other bodies, with a hand reaching out of the flames. Another woman, unconscious, was being carried away in a wheelbarrow on a road strewn with glass shards.

Tensions were rising between Christians and Muslims in the city, the capital of Plateau state in Nigeria’s Middle Belt region that divides the country into the predominantly Muslim north and Christian south. It is a flashpoint for religious violence.  (read more)