Abuja: While world attention remains riveted on the drama of 276 missing schoolgirls abducted in mid-April, twin car blasts on Tuesday killed at least 118 people in the Nigerian city of Jos.

The bombings, the latest in a series of attacks, spread alarm across the country and raised new concerns about tensions between Christians and Muslims in this nation of 175 million.

Smoke rises after a bomb blast in Jos, Nigeria, on Tuesday. At least 118 people were killed in twin blasts timed for mass casualties. Credit:AP

Witnesses described seeing bodies torn apart and consumed by flames in the double blast at a busy bus station in Jos, the capital of Plateau state, a central region that splits Nigeria's mostly Christian and more fertile south from the mostly Muslim and more arid north, where Boko Haram militants have spread terror for five years.

The detonation of two vehicle bombs within half an hour seemed calculated to exact maximum casualties a tactic not seen before in Nigeria.