Children Chant ‘Oh God, We Are Hungry’ : South Beirut Muslims Riot Over Soaring Prices

Rioters including children and militia gunmen smashed windows of supermarkets and money exchanges in Shia Muslim slums Friday, the second day of protest against soaring prices in Lebanon.

Rioters carrying automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades joined others in setting tires ablaze on the highway to Beirut airport, blocking traffic for four hours.

Most of the attacks were in the Ghobeiry and Bir Hassan districts near the highway in south Beirut.

‘Oh God, We Are Hungry’

Children, about 10 years of age, smashed the glass fronts of at least two supermarkets and three money-changing booths with sticks and rocks, chanting: “Oh God, we are hungry! We want to eat!”

Holding their weapons high, the gunmen shouted: “Death to America! Death to France! Death to Israel!”

Protests began Thursday after the pound fell to a record low of 300 to the dollar in a nation that imports at least 85% of its basic goods. The pound’s decline makes imports more expensive.

Lebanon’s pound, once the strongest currency in the Middle East, has lost 98% of its value during 12 years of civil war in which more than 130,000 people have been killed.

The independent newspaper An Nahar described the two days of rioting as the “first spark in an all-embracing social explosion” brought on by the civil war’s economic consequences.

Some rioters waved posters of Shia militia chieftain Nabih Berri and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary patriarch. They stoned the few motorists who braved the blazing barriers on the airport highway.

A civil aviation official said after the highway was reopened that some departing flights had been postponed.

In Muslim West Beirut, Syrian commandos fired automatic rifles in the air to disperse about 30 rioters who tried to block traffic with burning tires.

Syria sent 7,500 soldiers to West Beirut on Feb. 22 to stop weeks of warfare among Muslim militia factions in which 300 people had been killed.

March on Corniche Mazraa

Protesters marched down West Beirut’s Corniche Mazraa commercial thoroughfare chanting slogans.

“We want food! We want medicine! We want fuel!” they shouted.

Heavily armed Syrian soldiers surrounded the marchers as they chanted: “Down with the dollar! Down with imperialism!”

Shops, banks and restaurants on the avenue closed for the day. Money changers throughout West Beirut shut their booths to escape the wrath of rioters, who smashed the glass fronts of several money exchanges Thursday in the Hamra district.