Body parts and blood have been strewn across the bus station in the Nyanya area of Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja, where an early morning bomb blast killed scores of people and injured many others.

Security forces have been battling to contain an unruly crowd of several hundred onlookers at the blast site.

“More than two buses carrying workers were cut up by the blast,” Reuters quoted eyewitness Kingsley Ajimobi as saying. “I saw many people in the bus dead, and many were injured.”

The rush hour blast is the first such attack near the Nigerian capital for two years. There had been no attacks near the capital since suicide car bombers targeted the Abuja office of THISDAY and two other papers in April 2012.

No group has claimed responsibility but fingers are pointing in the direction of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which has waged an increasingly bloody insurgency in the country’s North-East region.

•Photo shows scene of the bomb blast.