AP and Reuters articles tells how people are now dying not from starvation, but from the current food crisis and high food prices:
MOGADISHU, Somalia - Troops opened fire and killed at least two people as tens of thousands of people rioted over high food prices in Somalia's capital Monday.
Several people also were injured in the protest in Mogadishu in this Horn of Africa nation.
Prices of rice and other food staples have been rising rapidly around the world, boosted by poor weather in some nations and rising demand. In Africa, prices of some staple foods have increased more than 50 percent in a matter of weeks.
The Somali protesters include women and children, who marched to protest the refusal of traders to accept old 1,000-shilling notes, blaming that for the skyrocketing food prices.
Soon after, tens of thousands of people took to the streets, hurling stones that smashed the windshields of several cars and buses. Rocks also were thrown at shops and chaos erupted at the capital's main Bakara market.
Hundreds of shops and restaurants in southern Mogadishu closed their doors for fear of looting.
Dr. Dahir Dhere said a man wounded in the protests died on the way to an operating room at the capital's main Medina Hospital.
Protester Abdinur Farah says he was marching with his uncle in southern Mogadishu when government troops opened fire and wounded his relative. He said his uncle died before they could take him to the hospital.
In Mogadishu, the price of 2.2 pounds of corn meal has gone from 12 cents in January to 25 cents. Another staple, rice, has gone up in that time from $26 to $47.50 for a 110-pound sack.
Protests also have been held in three other African countries, including Senegal, whose president on Sunday called for the United Nations to dismantle its Food and Agriculture Organization, calling it an ineffective money-eater that failed to help avert the global food crisis.
Senegal's leader, President Abdoulaye Wade, said he had long called for the Rome-based organization to be transferred to Africa, "near the 'sick ones' it pretends to care for."
But, "This time, I'm going further: It must be eliminated," he said in a statement. Wade suggested its assets be transferred to the U.N. International Fund for Agricultural Development, which he said was more efficient, and that that agency set up headquarters in Africa "at the heart of the problem."
FAO officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Wade's government responded to protest marches by securing a deal with India that ensures Senegal's needs of 600,000 tons of rice a year are met for the next six years. In Burkina Faso, the government eliminated duties and taxes on rice, salt, milk and all products used to prepare food for children.
---A young man was killed when thousands of Somalis protested in Mogadishu on Monday over food traders' refusal to take old currency notes blamed for stoking spiralling inflation, witnesses said. A shopkeeper shot the man dead after dozens of demonstrators wielding clubs and stones broke into his store. Locals said police wounded a teenage boy while trying to disperse hundreds of angry residents. "The shopkeeper fired a pistol at the crowd and it hit the young man's head," one witness in the Madina district in the southeast of the capital said, refusing to give his name.
Despite still being a legal currency, many shopkeepers have been refusing to accept the worn out old notes, saying wholesale traders were also refusing to take 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 the fall in value on counterfeiters. With an interim government focused on containing islamist insurgency, there is no one to control rampant counterfeiting of currency which is often exchanged for real dollars that are then taken out of the country. 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, triggering several protests or riots in the past six months.
On Monday, 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 as protestors stoned the few vehicles moving around.
"NOTHING TO EAT"
"The whole city is up in smoke," protestor 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 notorious 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 told Reuters.
Somalia has been without any kind of real government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre by a coalition of warlords. Since then, the country's agricultural bounty has withered to the point where Somalis rely on imports. "The refusal of the old bank notes is an economic war which will automatically lead to violence and starvation," Osman Buno, another shopkeeper, told Reuters. The exchange rate is so bad Somalis must carry huge stacks of 1,000 Somali shilling notes just to buy daily necessities.
