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 is reported to have hit a church in the central city of Jos soon after.
An emergency official in Abuja told reporters authorities were struggling to cope with the casualties there.
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.
National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) spokesman Yushau Shuaibu told the BBC that the Abuja explosion had happened in the street outside the church.
But he said the church had been badly affected by the blast, and the number of dead was likely to rise.
Islamist conflict
Earlier he told Reuters news agency: "We are presently evacuating the dead and the injured, but unfortunately we don't have enough ambulances.
"Most of our ambulances have gone to operate on the major highways of the country."
Witnesses said windows of nearby houses had been shattered by the explosion.
Officials at the local hospital said the condition of many of the injured was serious, and they were seeking help from bigger medical facilities.
No group has said it carried out the attack.
The security forces this week have been battling militants from the Boko Haram group, an organisation that wants to impose an extreme brand of Islamic law on the whole country.
Dozens have been killed in gun battles, but the violence has been in the far north of the country, hundreds of miles from Abuja.
Sectarian violence is rare in the capital.
A January 2011 bomb blast at a bar near a barracks Abuja was blamed on Islamists.
While most of the population across northern Nigeria is Muslim, the south is largely made up of Christians.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16328940
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