MAPUTO: Long queues for food and fuel formed in the streets of Mozambique’s capital on Friday as shops reopened after two days of violent protests over rising prices that left seven dead and hundreds wounded.

Calm returned to the capital of the east African country following the protests, with the government saying the price rises were “irreversible.” The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Friday it would hold a special meeting on September 24 to discuss rising world food prices, with an official admitting there was “a lot of volatility” in cereal markets.

The FAO official rejected comparisons with the situation in 2007-2008, however, when food shortages and the resulting price rises sparked riots throughout the developing world.

Maputo’s largest hospital said the stream of patients injured in the violence had stopped by midnight on Thursday, after fresh clashes between police and demonstrators erupted on Thursday evening.

“By 9pm it was quiet,” Maputo Central Hospital emergency director Antonio Assis da Costa told the reporter on Friday morning.

“Later some patients arrived. Maybe the last case would be by midnight,” he added.

Da Costa said 32 patients treated at the hospital on Thursday had been hit by rubber bullets fired by police.

Maputo residents left hungry after two days of store closures formed 20-metre queues outside bakeries on Friday, but complained they could barely afford to buy bread after a 17-percent price increase.

“People don’t have money to buy food,” domestic worker Elisa Aldino told the reporter, visibly angry as she queued for bread at a bakery in a middle-class neighbourhood.

“They don’t have enough. If they don’t have money, they sleep without eating.”