(Adds details, background) MOGADISHU, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Somalis protested in a town near the Ethiopian border on Sunday, burning tyres and demanding Ethiopian troops free a military commander detained for refusing to hand over an ousted Islamist, a resident said. "We are demonstrating against the arrest of our commander by Ethiopian troops. We want him released immediately," Haji Nur, a resident of the south central town of Baladwayne, told Reuters by telephone. Government troops fired shots in the air to disperse the crowd, residents said, adding that no Ethiopian troops were in the town. They said Mukhtar Hussein Afrah, a commander for the government troops in the Hiiran and Middle Shabelle regions, had refused to hand over the former Islamist ruler of the town because of a government amnesty offer to the defeated movement. The Islamist had been detained but released and allowed to stay in Baladwayne, they said. Sunday's protest came a day after hundreds of Mogadishu residents took to the streets of the capital, to protest the presence of Ethiopian troops, which helped the Somali interim government drive out Islamists after a two-week war.
