Gunmen have killed a Chinese construction worker and wounded two others in a border town in Nigeria's northern Kaduna state, police said Monday.

"The incident happened on Saturday at a border town between Kaduna and Plateau states," Kaduna state police spokesman Aminu Lawan told AFP.

"Three Chinese nationals supervising the Jos-Kafanchan rail project were attacked in their truck by unknown gunmen. One of them died in the attack while the other two sustained injuries."

Lawan said the motive for the attack was not yet known.

In February last year, gunmen slit the throats of three Chinese doctors in a pre-dawn attack in Potiskum, in the northeastern state of Yobe.

The banned Islamist group Boko Haram, blamed for scores of deadly attacks in the north, claimed responsibility for the killings.

In November 2012, armed men shot dead two Chinese construction workers in nearby Borno State, which is also the stronghold of the Boko Haram extremists.

In October of the same year, a Chinese construction worker was killed in the Borno state capital Maiduguri while another Chinese national was shot dead in the town of Gubio, outside Maiduguri.

The killings of the Chinese nationals at the time prompted Beijing to lodge a diplomatic protest with the Nigerian authorities.