Boko Haram militants attacked three villages in Nigeria, killing 48 people, residents said Wednesday, as rescue workers in the central city of Jos searched for the missing a day after two car bombs killed more than 100 .

One of the villages that were attacked between Tuesday night and early Wednesday lies near the town of Chibok, where more than 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped last month.

The city in central Nigeria sits on a volatile fault line dividing Nigeria's mainly Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south and has been a flashpoint in the past for deadly conflict between adherents of the two religions. Boko Haram, the group suspected in the attack, wants to impose an Islamic state under strict Shariah law in Nigeria, though half the country's 170 million people are Christians.

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