Catholic Online Forum

Nigerian authorities and witnesses say a suicide car bomber has rammed into a church in the northern city of Kaduna, killing at least seven people and triggering reprisal attacks that killed another two.

The bomber drove a jeep into St Rita's church in Kaduna's Malali district during Sunday morning prayers, causing a large explosion. Rescuers rushed the casualties to hospitals. Witnesses said angry Christian youths armed with machetes and sticks roamed the streets after the bombing, beating two suspected Muslims to death in the religiously-mixed city.

There was no immediate claim of the responsibility for the church blast.

Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram has attacked several churches with bombs and guns in the past year.

A Nigerian Islamist militant group's claims to have killed seven foreign hostages it seized last month are credible, Western governments say.

The hostages - from Italy, Britain, Greece and Lebanon - were captured in a raid on a construction site in the northern state of Bauchi.

In an online statement posted on Saturday, the militant group Ansaru said it had killed the captives.

Ansaru is suspected of being an offshoot of the Boko Haram network.

On Sunday, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said a British construction worker, named as Brendan Vaughan, was "likely to have been killed at the hands of his captors, along with six other foreign nationals".

"This is an unforgivable act of pure, cold-blooded murder, for which there can be no excuse or justification," he added.