Nigeria troops fire shots near mosque to disperse protest

Nigerian soldiers fired live rounds in the air outside a mosque in the flashpoint city of Jos on Friday to disperse a crowd planning protests over a US-made anti-Islam film, a spokesman said. The soldiers "had to fire some warning shots in the air, but there were no casualties," Captain Salihu Mustapha, military spokesman in Plateau state, told AFP, putting the crowd at several hundred. "The placards they were carrying were denouncing America." After Friday prayers at Jos's Yantaya mosque, which adheres to the hardline Wahhabi branch of Islam, a group began demonstrating against the film that mocks the Prophet Mohammed and has sparked deadly protests in several countries. "We are not going to allow any protests in Jos," a city where violence between Muslim and Christian groups has killed thousands of people in recent years, the spokesman said. The United States closed its embassy and consulate in Nigeria early on Friday as precautionary move, following protests outside its diplomatic buildings in several Arab nations. The US embassy also warned of potential unrest in Jos, which falls on the dividing line between Nigeria's majority Muslim north and largely Christian south. Nigeria is Africa's most populous country with an estimated 160 million people, roughly half of whom are Muslim.