MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Thousands of angry Somalis rioted Monday over rising food prices and the collapse of the nation's currency, culminating in clashes with government troops and armed shopkeepers that killed at least five protesters, witnesses and officials said.

"I've never demonstrated before, but I'm not ashamed, because if you can't eat, you will do whatever you can," said Abdullahi Mohammed, 57, of Mogadishu. "Before, I was eating three times a day, but now sometimes it's not even once."

Somalia's beleaguered population is coping with a civil war that began with the collapse of the government in 1991. But recently, the Horn of Africa nation's food industry, which previously thrived thanks to private traders, has been grappling with soaring inflation, spurred by an explosion of counterfeit currency over the last year and the global spike in food prices. Somalia imports at least 60 percent of its grain, and its local crops this year were devastated by a cycle of drought and flooding.

As a result, prices for rice, maize, sorghum and other cereals are up between 100 percent and 400 percent over the past year. A sack of rice that sold for $32 only one month ago is going for $52.

At the same time, the nation's currency, the shilling, has lost half its value against the U.S. dollar over the past year, requiring consumers to carry sacks of money just to buy common grocery items.

Somalia joins a growing list of African countries where rising food prices have led to violence, including Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Egypt.

ROME --A leading human-rights group on Monday urged the governments of Albania and the self-declared state of Kosovo to investigate horrific allegations about the kidnapping and abuse of Serb civilians after the NATO-led war that drove Serbian forces from Kosovo.

The allegations involve about 400 Serbs who went missing after the war, which ended in June 1999. At that time, Kosovo Albanians were gaining power, backed by the United Nations and the U.S.

Human Rights Watch, in urging an investigation, cited new information, some of it contained in a controversial book written and released in April by the former lead war crimes prosecutor for the Balkans, Carla Del Ponte.

According to Del Ponte and other accounts presented to the war-crimes tribunal at The Hague, several hundred Serbs were abducted in Kosovo and transported across the province's southern border to Albania. Some were beaten. Their fates have remained undetermined and many are thought to have been killed.

BAGHDAD -- There's a place in this city, amid the snarled checkpoints and mazes of blast walls and general anxiety, where families still gather for picnics, teenage boys kick around soccer balls, young couples canoodle furtively under trees and children bury their faces in cotton candy.

Zawra Park, a sprawling, 250-acre public park in central Baghdad, is one of the few open spaces left in the capital. It's seeing a resurgence of visitors, thanks to improved security in central Baghdad, even as car bombings and mortar attacks continue to strike just a few blocks away.

"I come to Zawra because it's the only place we have in Baghdad," said Anas Abo Yousif, a 27-year-old taxi driver who brought his wife and two children to the park on a recent, sun-baked Saturday afternoon.

Sitting in the shade of a padlocked, rundown pavilion and sipping on a soda, Yousif acknowledged that the park had seen better days. Opened in 1973 by the city of Baghdad, Zawra was a showpiece under Saddam Hussein's regime, a place where tens of thousands gathered for expos, flower shows and holiday fairs.

But after five years of war -- though the park has been spared any direct attacks -- the grass has grown patchy, the paint has peeled off the jungle gyms and the water fountains have run dry.

"I have nice memories about Zawra during the former regime," Yousif said. "It used to be crowded with people, but now? Because people keep thinking about the security situation."

The U.S. military has helped to refurbish the park, spending $2.5 million over the past two years to upgrade restrooms, sewage, security equipment and other facilities -- primarily in a small, 17-acre zoo housing a small collection of animals. The work was done by Army soldiers with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, which is responsible for security in the section of the city that includes the park.

OLPE, Germany -- A 44-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of killing three of her babies after their bodies were discovered in the family freezer by her grown children looking for pizza, police said Monday.

Police confirmed the grisly find Sunday night in the town of Wenden, near Olpe, in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia after the woman turned herself in, officials said.

The three infants are believed to have been born alive, but authorities were awaiting autopsy results to determine how they died, said Johannes Daheim, a spokesman for prosecutors investigating the case.

The woman, her 47-year-old husband and three adult children -- two sons, aged 18 and 22, and a 24-year-old daughter -- have lived in the town in a single-family home since 1984.

The children discovered the frozen babies on Saturday afternoon while their parents were away for the weekend, investigator Martin Feldmann said.

MINSK, Belarus -- Belarus on Monday accused the United States of recruiting citizens into a spy ring aimed at undermining the ex-Soviet republic.

The U.S. State Department said the allegation was "just ridiculous" and that the department was considering whether to close its embassy in Minsk.

Tension has been building between Washington and the authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, and most U.S. Embassy employees have been expelled in recent months.

Valery Nadtachayev, a spokesman for the main security agency, the KGB, told Belarusian television on Monday that the U.S. Embassy had hired 10 local citizens to take photographs of police officials, airports and villages near the state border.

Most of the diplomats were expelled after the U.S. imposed sanctions on a state-controlled Belarusian company and travel restrictions on President Alexander Lukashenko and other top government officials.

The U.S. Embassy in Minsk declined comment, but in Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey rejected the accusations.