Slideshow: Christmas around the world

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria -- Pirates attacked a ship being used by an oil servicing company in waters off southeastern Nigeria on Saturday, killing two Nigerian naval guards and kidnapping four foreigners, the navy said.

"The incident was somewhere around the Niger Delta, where an oil servicing company was attacked by gunmen. We lost two of our men and four expatriates were abducted, one Malaysian, one Iranian," navy spokesman Commodore Kabir Aliyu said.

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He said a Thai and an Indonesian were also taken, but had no immediate further details.

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Security in the Delta has improved since militant activity shut down nearly half of Nigeria's oil output around the middle of the last decade, thanks to an amnesty between various militant factions and the government.

But the situation remains volatile and inflamed by organized crime and local political rivalries.

Piracy and kidnapping in the Delta and offshore are common, and West Africa's oil-rich Gulf of Guinea is second only to the waters around Somalia for the risk of pirate attacks, which drives up shipping insurance costs.

They are seen as more of a criminal enterprise making huge sums for armed gangs than as anything political.

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Nigerian pirates usually release kidnapped crew members after their cargo has been looted, rather than hold them for ransom.

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LAGOS, Nigeria -- Ninety-five people died after a fuel tanker crashed into other vehicles, caught fire and exploded, a Nigerian government agency said Thursday.

Most of the victims had rushed to the truck to scoop fuel in Okobe, a town in the oil-rich Rivers State in the south of the country, a spokesman for the emergency management agency said. Yushau Shuaib added at least 18 others were injured.

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"We have cordoned off the area to ensure that miscreants do not take laws into their hands. We also want to know what exactly caused the inferno,’" Ben Ugwuegbulam, spokesman of the Rivers Police Command, told the Daily Times Nigeria.

Blasts hit northern Nigeria churches

The tanker crashed into three other vehicles while traveling on an east-west road, the Daily Times reported, citing the Federal Road Safety Commission.

The tanker did not immediately burst into flames after the collision, the paper said, and many people scrambled to the scene to collect fuel. 

The West African nation of Nigeria is a top exporter of crude to the United States and other countries.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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KADUNA, Nigeria - At least 52 people were killed in religious rioting sparked by three suicide bombings against churches in northern Nigeria, where the dead were piled up on Monday in mortuaries and cemeteries in the city of Kaduna.

Rioting broke out Sunday after suicide car bombers attacked three churches in northern Nigeria, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens.

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Christian youths had set up roadblocks and dragged Muslims from cars or motorbikes and killed them, witnesses said.

Although there has been no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday's church bombings, Islamist sect Boko Haram, which is waging an insurgency in the northeast against President Goodluck Jonathan's government, had claimed deadly church attacks on the previous two Sundays, as well as others.

A Reuters reporter visited two hospitals in Kaduna. At the St Gerald Hospital, spokesman Sunday Aliyu said there were 40 bodies in the hospital morgue and 72 people being treated for burns and other wounds. At Barau Dikko Hospital, Matron Hassana Garba confirmed 12 dead and two injured people being treated.

"Many of [the injured] need surgery, but a shortage of blood is stalling treatment," a Red Cross official in Kaduna told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

'Explosions and gunshots'
On Monday evening residents reported gunfire and explosions in Damaturu, the capital of northeast Yobe state and the site of several previous attacks by Boko Haram.

"We are all indoors, the explosions and gunshots have been going on since 5pm. It's boom, boom, boom, everywhere," Oluchi Jonah, a local resident, told Reuters by phone.

Blasts hit northern Nigeria churches

In November, 65 people were killed in attacks claimed by Boko Haram on churches, mosques and police stations in Damaturu, where security forces often clash with Islamists in gun battles.

Corpses littered church grounds in parts of Kaduna on Monday. They were piled one on top of the other in an old cemetery, some charred.

A 24-hour curfew imposed by the Kaduna state government on Sunday largely succeeded in restoring order, residents said.

The violence stoked fears of wider sectarian conflict in Nigeria, an OPEC member and Africa's top oil producer that is home to the world's largest equal mix of Christians and Muslims.

Nigerian whistleblower under investigation for alleged corruption

Mohammed Inuwa said he was lucky to escape with his life. He hid in a bush when rampaging Christian youths pulled Muslims off their motorcycles and beat them to death.

"They were mostly killing okada riders (motorbike taxis). I was hiding in the bush while all this was going on. If they saw me, that would be it," the second-hand clothes seller said, estimating 15 people were killed right by where he was hiding.

Boko Haram church bombings seem calculated to trigger wider sectarian strife, often striking at the heart of Nigeria's volatile "Middle Belt", where the mostly Christian south and Muslim north meet.

The Islamists' leader, Abubakar Shekau, has said the attacks on Christians were in revenge for the killings of Muslims.

But such attacks have usually failed to spark sustained conflict in a nation whose Muslims and Christians mostly co-exist peacefully, despite periodic flare-ups of sectarian violence since independence from Britain in 1960. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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A least two explosions shook the town of Zaria in northern Nigeria's Kaduna state on Sunday, the emergency services said, and at least one of them was at a church, a security official said. 

Reuters reported two explosions, while The Associated Press quoted a Nigerian official as saying that a third explosion had rocked the area. There was no explanation for the different accounts but such discrepancies are common in the immediate aftermath of such events.

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Islamist sect Boko Haram has often attacked church services in Nigeria, split roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims. 

Witness: Attack on Christians in Nigeria kills at least 15

Boko Haram, which has become increasingly radicalised and meshed with other Islamist groups in the region, including al-Qaida's north African wing, is the leading security threat to Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer and a member of OPEC. 

Regular attacks on Sunday church services are usually claimed by the sect, which says it is fighting to reinstate an ancient Islamic caliphate that would adhere to strict sharia (Islamic law). 

US warns of attacks on Westerners in Nigeria

Islamist militants attacked two churches in Nigeria last Sunday, spraying the congregation of one with bullets, killing at least one person, and blowing up a car in a suicide bombing at the other, wounding 41. 

The Islamists' leader, Abubakar Shekau, has justified attacks on Christians as revenge for killings of Muslims in Nigeria's volatile "Middle Belt", where the largely Christian south and mostly Muslim north meet. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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A Nigerian legislator who uncovered a $6.8 billion scam in state fuel subsidy payments has been suspended while police investigate claims he demanded a bribe from a fuel trader, in exchange for keeping him off the list.

Farouk Lawan's parliamentary probe blew the whistle on one of the biggest corruption scandals in Nigeria's history in April, revealing a web of collusion between oil ministry officials and fuel marketers to claim subsidy payments for billions of gallons of fuel that was never delivered.

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But allegations that he demanded - and took some of - a $3 million bribe from one of Nigeria's richest oil tycoons Femi Otedola to scrub his name off the list have cast doubt on the whole report.

 

The death toll for Americans killed when a plane crashed in Nigeria Sunday has risen to nine from seven, the U.S. State Department said Wednesday.

The Dana Air plane that crashed in Lagos, killing all 153 people on board, is Nigeria's worst airline disaster in two decades.

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After Nigeria plane crash, families mourn; government suspends airline

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83, operated by privately owned domestic airline Dana Air, smashed into an apartment block in a densely populated suburb on Sunday afternoon, killing everyone on board and probably six people on the ground.

"From the record of communication that we have, the captain of the aircraft called the traffic control in Lagos declaring a mayday and reported dual engine failure," Aviation Minister Stella Oduah told journalists at the presidential villa. "It was shortly after the captain's distress call that the aircraft could no longer be seen in the radar and communication was lost."

The government has set up panels to review the safety of all airlines in the country and suspended Dana Air's air license.

Dana Air has said there was nothing wrong with the aircraft.

Engine problems eyed after passenger jet crashes in Nigeria suburb

"Dana Air takes safety very seriously and our aircraft are sound," Dana Director Francis Ogboro told a news conference, repeating the company's position that there was no mechanical fault with the plane before it went down.

Workers have finished recovering bodies from the rubble, Lagos state attorney general Ade Ipaye said. In total, 149 bodies and a number of body parts were found. Around two-thirds of the remains could not be identified and were to undergo identification at a forensics laboratory.

Reuters and NBC News contributed to this report.

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LAGOS, Nigeria -- A commercial airliner crashed into a densely populated neighborhood in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, killing all 153 people on board and others on the ground in the worst air disaster in nearly two decades for the troubled nation.

Rescue officials said they fear many more people may have perished on the ground. The airline involved said an investigation had begun into the cause of Sunday's crash.

A Nigeria Red Cross report said 110 bodies had been recovered, with more being dug out from the rubble. A U.S. official said American citizens had been aboard the flight.

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The pilots reported engine trouble before the plane fell out of the sky on a clear afternoon, smashing into businesses and crowded apartment buildings near Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport. The flight was bound for Lagos, Nigeria's commercial center, from Abuja, the capital. Two years ago, the same MD-83 lost engine power due to a bird strike, according to an aviation database.

"The fear is that since it happened in a residential area, there may have been many people killed," said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.

PhotoBlog: Smoldering scene in Lagos, Nigeria after plane crash

The cause of the Dana Air crash remained unknown Sunday night, as firefighters and police struggled to put out the flames around the wreckage of the Boeing MD83 aircraft. Authorities could not control the crowd of thousands gathered around to see the crash site, with some crawling over the plane's broken wings and standing on a still-smoldering landing gear.

Harold Demuren, the director-general of Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority, said all on board the flight were killed in the crash. Lagos state government said in a statement that 153 people were on the flight traveling from Nigeria's central capital of Abuja to Lagos in the nation's southwest.

The flight's pilots radioed to the Lagos control tower just before the crash, saying the plane had engine trouble, a military official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

Rescue officials feared many others were killed or injured on the ground, but no casualty figures were immediately available. Firefighters and local residents were seen carrying the corpse of a man from one building, its walls still crumbling and flames shooting from its roof more than an hour after the crash. 

President Goodluck Jonathan later declared three days of national mourning in Africa's most populous nation.

The aircraft appeared to have landed on its belly into the dense neighborhood that sits along the typical approach path taken by aircraft heading into Lagos' Murtala Muhammed International Airport. The plane tore through roofs, sheared a mango tree and rammed into a woodworking studio, a printing press and at least two large apartment buildings in the neighborhood before stopping.

'Huge explosion'
Most people in Lagos' Agege suburb -- where the crash occurred --  live in tin-roofed buildings along unpaved streets.

"We heard a huge explosion, and at first we thought it was a gas canister," said Timothy Akinyela, 50, a local newspaper reporter who was watching a soccer match on TV with friends in a nearby bar.

A white, noxious cloud rose from the crash site that burned onlookers' eyes, as pieces of the plane lay scattered around the muddy ground.

While local residents helped carry fire hoses to the crash site, the major challenges of life in oil-rich Nigeria quickly became apparent as there wasn't any water to put out the flames more than three hours later. Some young men carried plastic buckets of water to the fire, trying to douse small portions. Fire trucks, from the very few that are stationed in Lagos state with a population of 17.5 million, couldn't carry enough water. Officials commandeered water trucks from nearby construction sites, but they became stuck on the narrow, crowded roads, unable to reach the crash site.

The dead included at least four Chinese citizens, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported late Sunday, citing Chinese diplomats in Nigeria. Officials at the Chinese embassy in Nigeria could not be reached for comment by the AP.

The spokesman for the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, Levi Ajuonuma, was also among the dead, according to a passenger list released by the airline. Ajuonuma was also de facto spokesman for the oil minister in OPEC member Nigeria, Africa's biggest crude producer.

Endemic corruption
Nigeria, home to more than 160 million people, suffers from endemic government corruption and mismanagement. The nation also has a history of major aviation disasters, though in recent years there hasn't been a crash. In August 2010, the U.S. announced it had given Nigeria the Federal Aviation Administration's Category 1 status, its top safety rating that allows the West African nation's domestic carriers to fly directly to the U.S.

But many travelers remain leery of some airlines. On Saturday night, a Nigerian Boeing 727 cargo airliner crashed in Accra, the capital of Ghana, slamming into a bus and killing 10 people. The plane belonged to Lagos-based Allied Air Cargo.

Officials with Lagos-based Dana Air did not respond to calls for comment Sunday night. The airline has five aircraft in its fleet and runs both regional and domestic flights. Local media reported a similar Dana flight in May made an emergency landing at the Lagos airport after having a hydraulic problem.

Nigeria has tried to redeem its aviation image in recent years, saying it now has full radar coverage of the entire country. However, in a nation where the state-run electricity company is in tatters, the power grid and diesel generators sometimes both fail at airports, making radar screens go blank.

Sunday's crash appeared to be the worst since September 1992, when a military transport plane crashed into a swamp shortly after takeoff from Lagos. All 163 army soldiers, relatives and crew members on board were killed.

'Oh God, we lost him'
The crash also comes as Nigeria, which became a democracy in 1999 after years of military rule, faces increasing sectarian bloodshed across its largely Muslim north from a radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram. Earlier Sunday, a suicide car bomber killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens of others.

As night began to fall Sunday, more and more worried relatives of passengers arrived in the neighborhood, pushing their way down the crowded, narrow streets to make it to the crash site. One man stopped to ask about the crash, whether any passengers walked away alive.

His eyes grew wide when he heard no one escaped alive, his hand rising to his mouth. His brother was onboard.

"Oh God, we lost him," the man whispered, before slowly walking away.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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