A suicide bomber smashed his explosives-laden car through the gates of a packed church during Sunday service in Jos, central Nigeria, killing three people and injuring dozens.

A suicide bomber smashed his explosives-laden car through the gates of a packed church during Sunday service in Jos, central Nigeria, killing three people and injuring dozens, church leaders said.

Witnesses said a black car crashed through the gate of a perimeter fence and exploded a few meters from the wall of an 800-seater church hall in the volatile city.

The attack is the latest in a country grappling with almost daily bomb and gun assaults, most of them blamed on the extremist group Boko Haram.

The church was about 80 percent full at the time and most of the victims were among latecomers to the service, he said.

Nigerian emergency services spokesman Yushau Shuaib said three people had been killed and 38 wounded. Church leaders said a total of 50 wounded were being treated at two hospitals.

The city of Jos and its environs is one of the most volatile areas in Nigeria, where hundreds of people have been killed in a spate of sectarian clashes between ethnic groups, particularly over land disputes.

Boko Haram has been blamed for a wave of increasingly bloody gun and bomb attacks in Africa's most populous country in recent months, mostly in the Muslim-dominated north.

Incidents of attacks are also growing in the central region, the so-called middle belt which divides the north from the mainly Christian south.

Last Sunday several people were wounded in an explosion near a church in the town of Suleija outside the capital, Abuja.