Top rebel held in new fighting

2002-07-27 22:18

Monrovia - Liberian troops captured a top rebel commander known as "Turtle Wear Glasses" in the most serious fighting for weeks in the anarchic West African country, military sources said on Saturday.

Rebels are fighting to overthrow elected President Charles Taylor, a former warlord accused of fuelling more than a dozen years of conflict in a region that ranks among the world's poorest despite its diamond wealth.

Military sources said the rebel commander was captured on Thursday during fighting around Bopolu, a base for rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) about 200km north of the capital Monrovia.

"Turtle Wear Glasses is being well taken care of. He is providing important information to the government at present," one source said. "There is fighting taking place now in Bopolu."

Rebel officials were not immediately available for comment.

Fighters on both sides often adopt bizarre "bush names" when they go to war.

Lurd, which pushed Taylor's forces to the gates of the capital earlier this year, says it is fighting to oust a man who brought UN sanctions on Liberia by allowing it to be used a conduit for brutal Sierra Leonean rebels selling gems.

But many Liberians fear their self-proclaimed liberators are no better than the tribalised warring factions that tussled for power during a seven-year war in the 1990s in which an estimated 200 000 people were killed.

Nearly three weeks ago, government forces pushed Lurd from Tubmanburg, a ruined iron ore mining town about 60km from Monrovia.

Liberia takes its name from its founding as a haven of liberty by freed American slaves in the mid-19th century. Africa's oldest republic, it celebrated its 155th anniversary of independence on Friday.

- Reuters