Twin Car Bomb Explosions In Nigeria Kill At Least 46 People [PHOTO]

Update 4:50 p.m. EDT: The death toll is now at least 118, Nigeria's relief agency said, and could rise rther.

"The exact figure of the dead bodies recovered as of now is 118," Mohammed Abdulsalam, coordinator for the National Emergency Management Agency in the city of Jos, told AFP.

He added that "more bodies may be in the debris" of buildings that collapsed due to the intensity of the blasts.

Original story:

Two bomb explosions in Nigeria have killed at least 46 people and injured many others in the central city of Jos, police say.

The blasts took place outside a busy market and bus terminal, an area considered the commercial center for the city, which has a population of about 900,000. While no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, the region is known to be a hotbed for clashes between Christian and Muslim groups in recent years, BBC reports.

The first bomb exploded from a truck. About 20 minutes later a second bomb blasted from a minibus. Some of the emergency workers that responded to the first blast were injured in the second explosion, witnesses said.

"What we are doing now is (trying) to evacuate the dead bodies ... many of them are burnt beyond recognition," Mohammed Abdulsalam, a coordinator for the National Emergency Management Agency, said.

Several witnesses at a hospital in Jos saw bodies being brought in that were burned beyond recognition, Muhammad Kabir Muhammad, a BBC correspondent, said.

The Plateau state, where Jos is located, is on the fault line between Nigeria’s Muslim north and Christian south. Boko Haram, an extremist Islamic group responsible for kidnapping 276 schoolgirls last month, has carried out attacks in the region in the past. But Jos has remained relatively calm for almost two years.

This is the second car bombing in less than a week in Nigeria. On Sunday, a suicide car bomb attack in the northern city of Kano, a predominately Christian area, killed five people on a busy street. Boko Haram did not claim responsibility for the attack, but officials believe they were to blame.

In April, two separate bomb blasts in Abuja, the capital in the center of the country, killed more than 120 people and wounded more than 200. Last July, multiple car bomb blasts killed 15 people in Sabon Gari. That same city suffered an attack on a bus station in March 2013 that killed 25 people.