Explosion in Taraba kills woman, wounds 5 children

An explosion near a state TV studio in eastern Nigeria's Taraba state killed a woman and wounded five children overnight, the emergency services said on Saturday.

It was the second blast in the remote town of Jalingo, in Nigeria's volatile ethnically and religiously mixed Middle Belt, in two days. A blast at an outdoor bar there killed at least one person and wounded 14 on Thursday.

There was no claim of responsibility for either blast, although suspicion is likely to fall on Islamist sect Boko Haram, which is waging a low level insurgency against President Goodluck Jonathan's government.

The insurgents want to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria, a country of 160 million people split about evenly between Christians and Muslims. They have been blamed for many hundreds of deaths in bombings or shootings and are seen as the number one security threat to Africa's top energy producer.

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