The United States, Britain and Germany closed their consulates in Nigeria's largest city Lagos on Friday due to a threat from foreign Islamic militants, U.S. military and diplomatic sources said.
Intelligence from foreign Islamic militant channels indicated a specific threat to the U.S. presence in the oil exporting country, diplomatic sources said.
"There was some kind of terrorist threat made. It was a terrorist threat that was called in," said Major Holly Silkman, a spokeswoman for the US European Command, at a military training exercise for West African forces in Senegal.
The United States also restricted public access to its Abuja embassy and stopped most staff from going to work in the capital, while operations at the British and German diplomatic headquarters in Abuja remained normal.
"The consulate in Lagos is closed. Abuja remains open, but has minimal staff," State Department spokeswoman Angela Aggeler said in Washington. A U.S. spokesman in Abuja had earlier described the Abuja embassy as closed.
Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil exporter, was named by Osama bin Laden as a candidate for "liberation" and the United States said last month it had uncovered links between his al-Qaida network and Nigerians.
"This is not a Nigerian source and there is not necessarily Nigerian participation, but we can't be sure of that," a diplomatic source said, adding that the move was unprecedented.
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A British spokesman in London said: "We have closed it because it is on the same road as the U.S. Embassy. We have done this as a precaution."
The Nigerian Foreign Ministry said the police were investigating an "alleged security situation, of interest to both Nigeria and the United States".
A Reuters correspondent in the diplomatic quarter of Lagos saw more than 50 riot police and anti-bomb squad officers searching people and cars entering Walter Carrington Close, home to many diplomatic missions.
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Religious bloodshed
Nigeria's population of 140 million people is divided roughly evenly between Muslims and Christians and the country has a long history of religious bloodshed.
Bin Laden in 2003 listed Nigeria as a candidate for "liberation", and he is revered as a hero by many Nigerian Muslims. But diplomats and analysts have until recently played down the influence of al-Qaida in Africa's most populous nation.
In a travel warning for Nigeria updated last month, the U.S. State Department said "links also were uncovered connecting Nigerians to al-Qaida in 2004".
A small home-grown Islamic sect known as the "Talibans" staged a series of attacks on government offices and police stations in the remote northeast at the end of 2003, calling for the imposition of an Islamic state.
The uprising was repressed by a heavy military deployment which killed or imprisoned many members of the secretive group.
The Muslim-dominated north of Nigeria maintains close contacts with the rest of the Islamic world, and plays host to many preachers from Saudi Arabia, Iran and elsewhere.
Nigeria has a long, porous border with Niger and Chad, two Islamic nations with long histories of poverty and rebellion that make them a fertile recruiting ground for anti-U.S. militants, analysts say.
One thousand U.S. military experts are training soldiers from nine West African countries including Nigeria in Senegal to curb arms smuggling and stop militants finding havens around the Sahara desert.