(Updates with casualties in second paragraph.)

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- At least five people were killed when three blasts went off today in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, including one at the state government secretariat, a police spokesman said.

“Five people have been confirmed dead and 14 are seriously wounded,” a Borno state police spokesman, Lawal Abdullahi, said by phone from the city.

In a separate incident, a gunman in the city suspected to be an Islamic militant shot dead Ibrahim Mohammed, a Muslim cleric, late yesterday at his home, Abdullahi said.

Authorities in Nigeria’s north have blamed a radical Islamic sect, Boko Haram, which draws inspiration from Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, for a spate of bomb attacks and killings targeting government officials and the security forces.

Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer and most populous country, is roughly split between a mainly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south. More than 14,000 people died in ethnic and religious clashes in the West African nation between 1999 and 2009, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

--Editors: Andrew Atkinson, Eddie Buckle

To contact the reporter on this story: Ardo Hazzad in Bauchi, Nigeria at ahazzad@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alastair Reed at areed12@bloomberg.net