The death toll from a series of co-ordinated bomb attacks on Catholic churches in Nigeria is now thought to be 32.
Dozens of others were injured in up to five explosions.
The militant Islamist group, Boko Haram, said it carried out an attack on St Theresa's Church on the outskirts of the capital, Abuja, killing at least 27 people.
A police man died during gunfire following a second blast at a church in the city of Jos.
St Theresa's Catholic Church in Madala, a satellite town about 40km from the centre of Abuja, was packed when the bomb exploded just outside.
"We were in the church with my family when we heard the explosion. I just ran out," Timothy Onyekwere told Reuters. "Now I don't even know where my children or my wife are. I don't know how many were killed but there were many dead."
Hours after the first bomb, blasts were reported at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church in the central, ethnically and religiously mixed town of Jos, and at a church in northern Yobe state at the town of Gadaka. Residents said many were wounded in Gadaka, but there were no immediate further details.
A suicide bomber killed four security officials at the State Security Service in one of the other bombs, which struck the northeastern town of Damaturu, police said.
Boko Haram - which in the Hausa language spoken in northern Nigeria means "Western education is sinful" - is loosely modelled on the Taliban movement in Afghanistan. It has emerged as the biggest security threat in Nigeria, a country of 160 million split evenly between Christians and Muslims.
Boko Haram's low level insurgency used to be largely confined to northeastern Nigeria, but it has struck several parts of the north, centre and the capital Abuja this year.
Last Christmas Eve, a series of bomb blasts around Jos killed 32 people, and other people died in attacks on two churches in the northeast.
The sophistication of the explosives it uses and the number of attacks it carries out have increased this year.
The sect was blamed for dozens of bombings and shootings in the north, and has claimed responsibility for two bombings in Abuja this year, including Nigeria's first suicide bombing, which killed at least 23 people at the United Nations headquarters.
Rights groups say more than 250 people have been killed by Boko Haram since July 2010.
