20110117
reuters

JOS, Nigeria (Reuters) - Three people were killed in central Nigeria on Monday when soldiers opened fire to quell a fight between Christian and Muslim youths over voter registration for April elections, police and witnesses said.

Soldiers opened fire at a secondary school being used as a voter registration centre in the city of Jos after a group of Christian youths tried to prevent Muslim electoral commission officials from delivering voting materials, witnesses said.

Schools across Nigeria have been closed for the voter registration exercise, which began on Saturday, and there were no children at the venue at the time.

"We tried to pacify them but they grew wild," Plateau state police commissioner Abdulrahman Akano told reporters.

"They started stoning the soldiers and the soldiers had no choice than to open fire on them in self-defence," he said, adding two of the youths were killed by the gunfire.

One electoral official was lynched and burned, bringing the death toll to three, while two soldiers were wounded, a spokesman for a joint military and police taskforce said.

Plateau state, of which Jos is the capital, lies in the "Middle Belt" where the mostly Muslim north meets the largely Christian south. It has seen years of ethnic tensions and is a major potential flashpoint ahead of the April elections.

The latest unrest brings the death toll in and around Jos to more than 100 since Christmas, when there were a series of bomb blasts and subsequent clashes in the city.