At least five people have been killed in Nigeria's central city of Jos after violence broke out following the killing of a Muslim man, an army spokesman and witnesses say.

Donald Oji, the spokesman for the military task force set up to police Jos after violence between Muslims and Christians killed hundreds of people in March, said three of those attacked on Saturday died in hospital.

"When the Muslims discovered the body, they took to the streets and barricaded roads, stabbing passers-by indiscriminately," he said.

The rioting in the capital of the central Plateau state began after the body of the Muslim man, who had apparently been strangled, was dumped in a sack on a main street, said officials.

Fierce competition for control of fertile farmlands between Christian and animist indigenous groups and Muslim settlers from the north have repeatedly sparked violence in central Nigeria's Middle Belt over the past decade.

Security forces said they had restored calm but a night curfew in Jos continued.

"We now have the traditional chief and the youth leader of the  area are with us and they are helping us with our investigation," Mohammed Lerama, the Plateau police spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

The latest killings have triggered fears of renewed clashes in Africa's most populous country, where religous clashes often result in the deaths of hundreds.

Sporadic violence killed at last nine people last week, seven of them discovered in shallow graves around 30km south of Jos.

Residents said they were killed after stopping at a roadblock set up by a local gang.