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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
LIBERIA: Civilians cross front line in Monrovia as guns fall silent
MONROVIA, 5 August 2003 (IRIN) - Hundreds of civilians began flooding across two battle-scarred bridges that divide the government-held city centre of Monrovia from the rebel-held port as the guns fell silent on Tuesday following the arrival of Nigerian peacekeeping troops.
Tension relaxed after more than two weeks of heavy fighting between government and rebel forces for the control of the seaside city of more than one million people.
Fighters loyal to President Charles Taylor tried at first to prevent the crowd of civilians from crossing the bridges that span the Mesurado River by firing into the air. But eventually, the crowd, chanting "We want peace! We want peace!" were let through to visit their abandoned homes and search for lost relatives.
An IRIN correspondent who accompanied the human tide across the frontline saw bodies lying in the streets and dozens of abandoned bullet-ridden vehicles in streets carpeted with emptry cartridges on the rebel side of the city.
"The bullet shells were so thick on the ground, it was like gravel," he said.
A plume of smoke rose from a residential area set alight by government artillery shells in fighting on Monday.
People appeared well fed because the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Development (LURD) rebel movement had broken open warehouses in the port and had distributed food stocks held there to the local population.
In contrast, food remained scarce in government-held areas of Monrovia, where the price of rice has soared five-fold in recent weeks and many people have not eaten a proper meal for days.
A senior LURD commander appealed to the United Nations to send representatives into the rebel-held sector of the city to discuss the distribution of food stocks still remaining in the port warehouses and the use of the Freeport to bring in more relief supplies.
Alhaji Sekou Fofana, LURD's deputy secretary general for civil affairs, told IRIN he only wanted to negotiate with the UN, because he did not fully trust some of the non-governmental relief agencies operating in areas of the city held by forces loyal to President Charles Taylor. He did not name them.
"We have confidence in the United Nations. That is why we are appealing to the UN to send representatives to us now to discuss distributing relief food from the WFP warehouse to the starving masses," Fofana said. "We have plenty of food left there."
Nigerian troops, who form the vanguard of a West African peacekeeping force, continued arriving from Sierra Leone at Robertsfield international airport, 50 km east of Monrovia in UN planes and helicopters on Tuesday.
An IRIN correspondent at the airport said about 200 arrived on Tuesday morning, bringing with them armoured cars in the belly of huge Russian-built heavy-lift helicopters. However, the Nigerian soldiers made no attempt to establish positions outside the airport, where an initial batch of 200 Nigerian troops landed on Monday.
General Festus Okonkwo, the force commander, said it would then be "a couple of days" before his men began to deploy inside Monrovia and a week or so before they achieved full control of the city.
However, senior Nigerian officers were already visible on Tuesday driving round the city centre for meetings with diplomats and government officials and their presence provided reassurance to Monrovia's hungry and battle-weary residents.
"They are around and people see them from time to time,"one foreign resident in the city centre remarked. "They are not on patrol, but they are visible and their very presence has served in itself to stop the fighting," .
Diplomats said a US naval task force was lying offshore, just outside territorial waters, with 2,300 marines on board, but the ships were not visible from the shore and the Americans showed no signs of intervening directly in the peacekeeping operation.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) plans to put a multinational force of 3,250 troops on the ground within three weeks, including contingents from Ghana, Togo, Benin, Mali, Senegal and Gambia.
LURD chairman Sekou Conneh said in Rome on Monday that his forces would withdraw from Monrovia once the peacekeepers arrive in sufficient numbers to take over security. But Fofana told IRIN in Monrovia on Tuesday that it would be LURD's National Executive Committee, of which he himself was a member, not Conneh alone, who would take the final decision on that.
The Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), another rebel movement, which controls the east of the country, said point blank that it would not give up any territory gained in recent fighting. However, it said ECOWAS troops were welcome to make use of the port of Buchanan, 100 km east of Monrovia, which it captured last week.
Tiah Slanger, MODEL's chief representative at Liberian peace talks in the Ghanaian capital Accra, said fighting was continuing in the area around Buchanan on Tuesday morning.
"While we will be happy to share the port with the West African force, we will not relinquish it completely," he said. "The same applies to all territories within our control."
The UN World Programme (WFP) said in a statement it was planning to put international staff back into Monrovia soon to supervise food distribution for up to 450,000 hungry people in Monrovia. While security remained fragile in the city, they would live aboard a specially chartered ship moored in the port, it added.
WFP said the ship, the "Seabulk Martin l," would also accommodate key staff of the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the non-governmental organisation Oxfam for an initial period of two months. The ship is expected to sail from neighbouring Abidjan in Cote d'ivoire on Tusday evening.
The UN Children's Fund UNICEF said meanwhile it was preparing to move nearly 60 tonnes of relief supplies into Monrovia, including blankets, tarpaulins, tents, kerosene lanterns, water storage bladders and water purifications tablets. Most of these supplies were positioned in Abidjan.
"As soon as peace is secured, UNICEF will be able to provide additional assistance to reach the needy population in as early as two days," Cyrille Niameogo, the UNICEF representative in Liberia, said from his temporary base in Abidjan.
Taylor has pledged to step down on as president August 11 in order to facilitate the peace process in Liberia, but doubts remained over when he would bow to pressure from ECOWAS and the United States to leave the country.
South African President Thabo Mbeki was quoted by Reuters on Tuesday as saying that Taylor would hand over power to his vice-president, Moses Blah on August 11, and leave the "same day or the day after."
Taylor, a former warlord, has been indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone for his part in fuelling that country's 1991-2001 civil war. However, he has been offered political asylum by Nigeria, whose foreign minister, Oluyemi Adeniji held a long session of talks with him on Monday.
Diplomats said Adeniji flew back to Nigeria on Tuesday accompanied by Jonathan Taylor, a cousin of the president, who is Minister of State for Presidential Affairs.
Diplomats and relief workers are concerned that if Taylor's departure is delayed, the newly re-established ceasefire in Monrovia may break down with the Nigerian peacekeepers caught in the middle.
The UN Security Council has given its blessing to the ECOWAS peacekeeping force and has declared its willingness to establish a fully-fledged UN stabilisation force in Liberia by October 1. This would police a comprehensive political settlement that has yet to be negotiated at the Liberian peace talks in Accra.
News reports from New York quoted Hedi Annabi, the UN Assistant Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, as saying this UN force might be as big as the one deployed to Sierra Leone. This numbered 17,000 men at its height last year.
The reports quoted diplomats at the UN as saying that South Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India as well as several West African countries had expressed a willingness to contribute troops to it.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict
[ENDS]
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