Toll in Nigeria blasts reaches 80

ABUJA - The toll in the Christmas eve bomb blasts that rocked Nigeria’s restive Jos city has reached at least 80, the authorities said Monday.

According to Xinhua, the number of people injured in the attacks has crossed 100, Al Hassan Danjuma Aliu, the north central zonal manager at the National Emergency Management Agency, said in Jos, the capital of Plateau State.

The police in the Nigeria’s central north state Sunday confirmed the killing of 32 persons after three blasts rocked the city.

The blasts came a week after a Nigerian court sentenced 15 people to 10 years in prison for involvement in violent clashes in Jos in March.

Jos was plunged into bloody violence March 7, when members of local Muslim and Christian communities fought each other in revenge for previous killings.

Police said 109 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the March 7 tragedy, weeks after hundreds died in waves of sectarian violence in the region.

Observers have said the clashes are more than religious, as the Muslims, largely nomadic herdsmen from the north of the country, come into conflict with farming Christians from the south.