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The United States has deployed 80 military personnel to Chad to help find 200 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, who are blamed for a spree of deadly attacks this week including a massive car-bombing.

Twin car bombings in central Nigeria killed at least 118 people and brought entire buildings down Tuesday, in the latest affront to the government's internationally-backed security crackdown.

International efforts have widened to trace more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamists militants in Nigeria, while France has called for African leaders to hold a summit focused on the issue.

Nigerian police on Friday said Boko Haram militants were holding 223 girls of the 276 seized from their school in the country's northeast, revising upwards the number of youngsters abducted.

Heavily armed Boko Haram Islamists kidnapped more than 100 girls from a school in northeast Nigeria, sparking a search by soldiers to track down the attackers, a security source and witnesses said.

Seventy-one people died in a bomb blast in a packed bus station in Nigeria's capital Abuja on Monday -- the deadliest attack yet to strike the city -- with the president blaming the explosion on Boko Haram Islamists.

Amnesty International urged the Nigerian security forces Friday to disclose the whereabouts of a man who was arrested after tweeting pictures of an attempted jail break at the headquarters of the intelligence agency.

The death toll in an attack by Fulani herdsmen on a village in northern Nigeria's Zamfara State rose to 79 from 30, a governor spokesman said.

Fifteen civilians were killed in an explosion in northeast Nigeria on Tuesday, after troops foiled what the military said was an attempted suicide attack by Boko Haram Islamist militants.

Two British nationals were among 14 people arrested on suspicion of attempted bribery in connection with an alleged plot to steal oil from a pipeline, Nigeria said.

Nigeria, under fire internationally for banning gay marriage and alleged abuses while tackling Islamist insurgents, received its first visit from the United Nations human rights commissioner.

At least 74 people were killed in attacks blamed on Boko Haram militants this weekend, taking the overall death toll this year beyond 300, with no apparent end in sight to the carnage.

Suspected Boko Haram Islamists killed 43 people on Tuesday in an attack on secondary school students as they slept in the latest school massacre to hit Nigeria's troubled northeast.

Gains in fighting malaria in sub-Saharan Africa have left the highest risk for the disease concentrated in 10 countries.

Nigeria is to hold its next presidential election on February 14, 2015, the electoral agency said Friday, with incumbent head of state Goodluck Jonathan expected to seek a second term.

Gay activists on Tuesday vowed to fight the Nigerian government after the country outlawed same-sex unions, warning the act legitimised homophobic violence and increased fears of persecution.

Boko Haram's leader said in a video obtained by AFP on Thursday that the group was behind a daring raid on military installations in the north Nigerian city of Maiduguri earlier this month.

Kazakhstan Secretary of State Marat Tazhin has accepted the credentials from Ambassadors of Denmark, Uruguay. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Bangladesh, Philippines, Zambia, Nigeria and Fiji.

Thirty-five bodies in military uniform have been brought to a morgue in Nigeria's restive northeast after a coordinated assault by Boko Haram targeting the security forces.
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