About 19 people were killed and 17 others injured in a suicide bombing in north-east Nigeria, a day before the president visited another town hit by violence.

Suicide bombers killed 21 people in attacks on three churches in Nigeria during Sunday services, exacerbating religious tensions in a West African nation that is almost evenly divided between Muslims and Christians.

Five suspected members of a radical Islamist sect were killed in an explosion that struck a small town in the country’s restive north east, Nigeria’s military said.