CAIRO, March 17: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has mobilised the army’s ovens to deal with the country’s massive bread shortages amid rising social unrest, official media reported on Monday.

Mubarak has told the army and the interior ministry, which control bakeries usually used to make bread for the troops, to increase their production in order to “put an end to the bread crisis,” Al-Ahram daily said.

Egypt is in the grip of a serious bread crisis brought on by a combination of the rising cost of wheat on world markets and sky-rocketing inflation.

Four people have been killed in fights that broke out in bread queues in recent weeks, a security official said.

Mubarak said that the phenomenon of bread queues “must disappear.” While most bread in Egypt is subsidised, the price of non-subsidised bread has risen by more than 26 per cent over the last year.

“Where’s the problem?” the official Mena news agency quoted Mubarak as asking. “If it’s the production, then it should be increased. If it’s the distribution, then new distribution points should be opened.” Twenty percent of Egypt’s population of 78 million lives under the poverty line of two dollars a day, with another 20 per cent hovering just above. Around four per cent of Egyptians live in extreme poverty, the World Bank said.

At least 70 people were killed when bread riots erupted in 1977 after the government tried to reduce subsidies on the staple, of which Egyptians are the world’s biggest consumers.—AFP