Somali police kill 5 food protesters: witnesses

At least five demonstrators were killed Monday when Somali security forces fired at crowds protesting rising food prices in the capital Mogadishu, witnesses said.

"Police opened fire at civilians who were closing in on a police station (and) killed two demonstrators, including a young boy in Dharkiley area," Farah Mohamed Abdi told AFP.

Another witness, Osman Mukhtar, said police shot two other civilians at a checkpoint in the Waberi area when they responded to grenade attack, bringing the total death toll to five from the demonstrations after another death was reported earlier.

Thousands of Somalis protested in Mogadishu over food traders' refusal to take old currency notes blamed for stoking spiraling inflation, witnesses said.

Despite still being 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 an 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 exchange rate is so bad Somalis must carry huge stacks of 1,000 Somali shilling notes just to buy daily necessities.

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.

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.