Sporadic shooting rang out overnight in the central Nigerian city of Jos and witnesses said at least one person was killed by soldiers enforcing a curfew days after attacks on three nearby Christian villages. Jos, which lies at the crossroads of Nigeria's Muslim north and Christian south, has been tense since raiders attacked the villages of Dogo Nahawa, Zot and Ratsat just south of the city on Sunday, violence in which hundreds are feared to have died.

Fierce competition for control of fertile farmlands between Christian and animist indigenous groups and Muslim settlers from the north have repeatedly triggered unrest over the past decade.

Retaliatory attacks are not uncommon and Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has put the security forces on red alert to try to prevent unrest from spreading to neighbouring states at the heart of Africa's most populous nation.

Jos was already under a dusk-to-dawn curfew after clashes between Christian and Muslim mobs in January which killed more than 400 people, according to community leaders.

Stern warning

"Last night until this morning everybody kept vigil. Nobody slept," said Felvis Aduba, a Jos resident who owns a shop selling electronic goods.

Aduba said the city had been put on edge by SMS messages sent to mobile phones warning that militants from the Muslim Hausa-Fulani ethnic group, blamed for Sunday's attacks, were coming from the northern city of Maiduguri to wage war.

Gangs of youths gathered in self-defence, witnesses said.

Gunfire also rang out from the Tudun Wada neighbourhood of the city overnight, where residents said panic was sown when a resident from another state received a truckload of cows.

Many of the herders around Jos are Hausa-Fulani and when a vigilante group saw the animals, they took the man for a northern Muslim and mobbed him, before the security forces opened fire to disperse them, killing one person. – Reuters