20100820
reuters

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's al Shabaab rebels said on Friday they had burned more than 500 sacks of grain from the U.N.'s World Food Programme because they had expired and were a danger to public health.

"WFP brings the bad food to poison our people. Indeed many would have died from it, so we have traced it and confiscated it from the markets and decided to burn it," said Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, al Shabaab's governor for the Mogadishu area, which is largely under rebel control.

He told reporters the bags had contained maize, wheat and ground millet, and warned citizens not to sell or eat WFP food.

But a WFP spokesman in Nairobi rejected the claims.

"WFP does not allow food that has expired to be distributed in Somalia," Peter Smerdon told Reuters by phone.

"All WFP food is in our warehouse at the port. If it is WFP food they burned, we don't know where they got it from."

The WFP has been central to international efforts to address an acute humanitarian crisis in Somalia, racked by drought as well as decades of conflict that have left it without an effective government for 19 years.

Al Shabaab, inspired by al Qaeda, has had several run-ins with WFP, prompting the agency to suspend its operations in much of southern Somalia at the start of this year.

Bomb attacks carried out by al Shabaab in the Ugandan capital last month prompted African leaders to commit extra peacekeeping troops to Somalia.