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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
LIBERIA: IDPs flee camps as rebels advance into Monrovia
MONROVIA, 6 June 2003 (IRIN) - Liberian rebels surged into the western outskirts of the capital Monrovia on Friday after heavy fighting overnight which sent thousands of displaced people fleeing in heavy rain into the city centre.
There was chaos in the streets as the tropical downpour continued. The rebels were reported to have advanced within 15 km of the city centre and several international organisations said they had begun making arrangements to evacuate their remaining staff to neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone.
The upsurge in fighting came a day after President Charles Taylor announced that he had foiled an attempted coup by several military commanders and senior figures in government.
Taylor sacked Vice-President Moses Blah who was apparently implicated in the plot and announced that he would disolve his cabinet next week. Several news reports suggested on Friday that Blah was now under arrest.
Many of those fleeing on foot from the latest fighting were inhabitants of camps for displaced people on the outskirts of Monrovia. They told IRIN that the sound of heavy artillery fire had continued from the western outskirts overnight as government reinforced its positions with militias and the elite Anti-Terrorism Unit.
The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had received reports that most of the 200,000 inhabitants of the camps for displaced people were moving out towards the city centre because of the intensification of fighting between rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and government fighters.
In Ghana, peace talks which were to have started between the Liberian government and LURD were stalled for the second day running. Ghanaian foreign minister, Nana Akuffo-Addo, said they would not resume until there was a ceasefire in Liberia and a second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), sent a delegation to participate in the negotiations.
Relief workers in Monrovia warned of a possible humanitarian disaster if fighting continued around the city for several days. OCHA said most of those arriving in the city centre had no water, food, medicines or sanitation facilities. Hospitals were struggling to cope with the wounded as police ambulances ferried them from the front line.
International organisations started meanwhile evacuating staff from the country. "We are concerned about the security of our staff and are moving non-essential staff to Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown," one aid worker said.
By Friday afternoon, the rebels were reportedly 15 km from the city centre and had taken control of Iron gate, Virginia, and Caldwell areas in the northwestern outskirts of Monrovia. An earlier rebel attempt on Thursday to take over these areas was repulsed by government fighters, eyewitnesses told IRIN.
A 14-man LURD delegation to the Ghana talks was tight lipped about the fighting. They however told reporters they would not sit down to talk representative of a government "led by an indicted war criminal." This was a reference to Wednesday's indictment of President Charles Taylor by a UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone. This accused him of war crimes for backing the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF)during Sierra Leone's civil war in the 1990s.
However, the Ghanaian foreign minister told reporters that the peace talks in Akosombo, 100 km north of the capital, Accra, had only been stalled temporarily.
"President John Kufuor [of Ghana] has sent an air force plane to bring the MODEL here. Let us give them the weekend to join the talks," Nana Akuffo-Addo said. He did not say where the plane had been sent.
The Liberian peace talks formally opened on Wednesday at a ceremony in Accra attended by six African presidents, but they have made little headway since.
Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Secretary-General of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which brokered the talks along with the UN-backed International Contact Group on Liberia, said some limited discussions would go on in Akosombo in the meantime.
General Abdulsalami Abubakar, facilitator of the talks, appealed for a ceasefire. "The tragic mistake any group can make is to think that there is a military solution to Liberia. It has never been so and it will never be," he said.
But some delegates said they were disturbed by Taylor's announcement on Thursday that he had foiled a coup attempt and by the Sierra Leone's issue of an international warrant for his arrest.
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, an opposition politician who served as interim president before elections in 1997 that brought Taylor to power, said Taylor's indictment by the Special Court in Freetown "has changed the whole nature of the conference."
Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict
[ENDS]
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