Food prices spark second day of riots in Mogadishu

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Mogadishu residents protested for asecond day on Tuesday against food traders who are rejectingold currency notes, fuelling tension as residents go hungrier,witnesses said.

Hundreds of youths barricaded roads, stoned vehicles andburned tyres in parts of the bombed-out Somali capitaldemanding that traders accept the worn-out Somali notes fromresidents desperately in need of food and other essentials.

"I'm hungry and yet cannot even buy food," AbdifatahHussein, 25, told Reuters holding a bunch of Somali shillingnotes. "I fear we might start eating one another. We will neverstop protesting until traders accept the notes."

Many shopkeepers have rejected the old notes, which arestill legal currency, saying wholesale traders and currencytraders will not take them. They are mostly demanding dollars,or newer Somali shillings.

Somalia's shilling is valued at about 34,000 to the dollar,and many blame the nearly 150 percent fall in value over thepast year to counterfeiters who mint the notes and thenexchange them for dollars.

That factor has ramped up inflation already sparked byrising food prices, and has been a simmering problem acrossSomalia for the last six months.

Though agriculturally fertile, the violence and anarchy inSomalia makes it dependent largely on food imports.

Local authorities and traders held crisis meetings inMogadishu on Tuesday in a desperate move to quell the growinganger among residents of one of the world's most impoverishedand well-armed cities.

On Monday, a young man was killed when thousands of Somalisprotested over the food traders refusal to take the oldcurrency notes blamed for the spiralling inflation, thecountry's worst in many years.

The Horn of African country has been without any kind ofreal government since the 1991 ouster of a dictator.

An interim administration in place since late 2004 is busyfighting an insurgency and is largely unable to address thedaily needs of its citizens.

(Additional reporting by Ibrahim Mohamed in Jowhar; Writingby Guled Mohamed; Editing by Bryson Hull and Charles Dick)

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