Following the Christmas day bombing of a Chrstian church that killed 40 and the subsequent burning of 30 Christian businesses, the violence has escalated with an attack on a mosque and the shooting death of a young girl in a Christian neighborhood.

The latest sectarian incidents began in a predominantly Christian area of Nigeria's Delta state on Tuesday night when attackers threw a bomb from a moving car into an Arabic school, wounding six children and an adult.

In Nigeria's ethnically and religiously mixed Plateau state, armed herdsmen shot dead three members of a Christian family. A state spokesman quoted the villagers as saying that attackers were suspected to be Fulani tribesmen, a mostly Muslim group blamed for previous raids on the village.

Mary Pam, the mother of one of the victims, said: ''When the Fulani herdsmen came around late in the night, I managed to escape through the window before they killed my son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter with guns.''

This week's attacks followed a series of violent clashes last week between Boko Haram and government forces in the restive northern state of Yobe that resulted in the deaths of nearly 70 people and led to 90,000 people fleeing their homes.

So much for "Peace on earth goodwill towards men."