By IINA,
Mogadishu : Police have fired in the air to disperse thousands of people protesting over rising food prices in the streets of Mogadishu, the capital city of Somalia. More than 10,000 people gathered in the southern neighbourhood of Madina today and marched towards the main Bakara trading district, where rally leaders addressed the crowd, an AFP correspondent said.
No casualties were immediately reported, but yesterday two people were killed in protests, witnesses said. However, unconfirmed reports say that there are five deaths in the riots. The crowd briefly dispersed after the firing. “This is the worst problem facing the planet. Nobody cares about civilians and traders are harming us even more than Somalia’s armed enemies now,” Sheikh Mohamoud Abdulle, a Muslim leader, told the crowd.
Two people were shot and killed and several people injured when tens of thousands of people rioted over high food prices in Mogadishu yesterday, hurling stones that smashed car windows and prompted hundreds of shops to close. The protesters included women and children, who began marching to protest the refusal of traders to accept old 1,000-shilling notes, which they charged was causing inflation. “The shopkeeper fired a pistol at the crowd and it hit the young man’s head,” one witness in Madina area of southeast Mogadishu said, refusing to give his name. Hundreds of shops and restaurants in southern Mogadishu closed their doors for fear of looting.
Despite still shilling being legal currency, many shopkeepers have been refusing the worn out old notes, saying wholesale traders refuse to accept them. The Somali shilling is valued at roughly 34,000 to the dollar – more than double what it is was a year ago – and many blame counterfeiters who mint the notes for the fall in value. The problem has been compounded by sharply rising world food prices, leaving many in the lawless Horn of Africa nation of 10 million short of money to buy food, sparking several protests or riots in the past six months.
Already yesterday, thousands were on the streets of the bombed-out capital, clutching tattered old notes while shouting “Down with traders” and “We want to buy food”. All shops remained closed and the streets empty and protestors stoned the few vehicles that dared to move around. “The whole city is up in smoke,” protester Hussein Abdikadir told Reuters while rolling a tyre he said he intended to burn in the Buulahubey neighbourhood of southern Mogadishu. “Traders have refused to take old notes. Food prices are high and we have nothing to eat,” he said. “We will protest until the traders agree to take the notes and sell us food.”
Traders in the sprawling Bakara market, which also houses a famous open-air arms bazaar, blame the interim government and unscrupulous businessmen for the runaway inflation.
“Businessmen blame the government, which does not control the security and circulation of money. The problem is from Bakara market but I don’t know who is behind it and how,” moneychanger Abdirahman Omar said.