Refugees caught in crossfire

2003-07-30 15:33

Monrovia - Caught in the crossfire of the battle for Monrovia, with rebel and loyalist bullets whistling overhead, the residents of Westpoint shantytown have fled the rest of Liberia and now have nowhere left to go.

A strip of shacks and rickety shelters facing the Mesurado River, Westpoint lies between the two key bridges where a rebels have staged a week-long battle in an attempt to cross over into the heart of Monrovia.

On one side of the river, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) rebel group has dug in and shelled the government positions at the crest of the hill on the other side.

Between them lies Westpoint and its 15 000 residents no longer panic - or even jump - when the bombs fall.

The fishermen hide behind their shacks, their canoes still laid out near the water, while a mortar shell thuds into the beach and kicks up a torrent of sand.

They play a mortal game, trying to guess which of the opposing camps has sent the latest round of bullets flying.

"At least 50 mortar shells fell on our area since the 19th of July. Every day people are dying or are wounded with stray bullets," says Drseyeh B Acquoi, a Red Cross worker in Westpoint.

"We have registered not less than 400 people who died following these bombs or bullets."

But from the heart of Monrovia's most hard-fought battle, in one of the worst moments in Liberia's achingly long civil war, Westpoint's residents have chosen to remain.

Almost all of the thousands massed here are already refugees, foreigners who have fled fighting in their country or Liberians displaced by the civil war that has raged here for nearly five years.

In this shantytown, they have built churches, public baths. They have set up markets.

But there is no food, since the Lurd has occupied the port which houses the city's warehouses.

Some fishermen, locals say, paddle across the Mesurado under the cover of night to search for rice on the rebel side.

"Impossible, it's too dangerous." Joseph Mesah, another fisherman, discounts the claim as foolhardy.

He tells the story of a young man who tried to escape a few days ago, paddling across the river, but was shot dead by automatic machinegun fire. "See, his boat sunk there", he says, pointing to a canoe stranded in the middle of the estuary.

Every day women from the town make a five hour journey into the city to try to find food, sometimes trading or selling dried fish.

In some of the streets hidden by waterfront buildings, life has a near-normal quality - except that residents keep to one side of the street to miss stray bullets.

But in a nearby Pentacostal church here, 250 people have taken refuge and are too terrified to leave.

"For two weeks we are hiding here. When they shell, people immediately come here for protection, they feel safer inside," says William D Golay.

President Charles Taylor's troops have set up heavy machine gun stands on the buildings overlooking the Johnson and Old Bridges, and sometimes they roll through Westpoint.

But locals, says Emmanuel Koffi, a Ghanian fisherman who has lived here for 25 years, try to "chase them away".

"We don't want rebels to shoot at us. They, they could leave, but we have nowhere else to go," he says.

Even the frontline seems the best option for some here, who watch as the humanitarian crisis worsens and food and water grow scarce in central Monrovia.

"People are scared to go to displaced camps inside Monrovia", says Fineboy Vovo, a boy in the neighborhood, as a soldier staggers in the street, blood trickling down his neck.

"They think they would catch cholera or other diseases there. At least here they feel at home."

- AFX