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Liberia: Civilian exodus
23/07/2003 16:00 - (SA)
Monrovia - Civilians were fleeing Monrovia by the hundreds in driving rain on Wednesday as fighting raged between government and rebel forces in the north of the devastated Liberian capital.
Droves of people carrying bundles of belongings headed east of the capital along Somalia Drive, a main artery linking the port area, seized by the rebels at the weekend, to the east of the city and the airport.
The exodus was sparked by heavy fighting for control of a strategic bridge linking the rebel-held port area to the northeastern suburbs.
Defence Minister Daniel Chea told AFP early on Wednesday that the rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) were "pounding our positions in the Stockton Creek bridge area with 81mm mortars."
About 2km east of the bridge, the Barnersville district was deserted, except for government soldiers manning checkpoints.
Liberian defence sources said the rebels appeared to be trying to control a route to the eastern Congo Town area, where President Charles Taylor and many top government officials live.
The government forces are fighting with the rebels in that area as well.
Photographer evacuated
Meanwhile a French photographer working for Time magazine and the Corbis-Sygma agency, Patrick Robert, was evacuated by a French military plane to Abidjan and was to be flown to France later in the day on Wednesday.
He has already received surgery for bullet wounds by International Committee of the Red Cross doctors.
Rejected peace agreement
The Lurd main rebel group fighting to oust Taylor for four years on Tuesday rejected a draft peace agreement chalked up by west African mediators in the Ghanaian capital Accra, saying it was inadequate.
Lurd and a second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model), faulted the plan for failing to propose three vice presidencies in a power-sharing transitional government for the west African state.
However the Lurd said it had ordered their men to halt their offensive on Monrovia.
The order was made Sunday, and has been repeated, but "every time they (rebels) intended to leave an area or do a tactical withdrawal, Taylor's forces opened fire, making the situation very difficult for us," said Lurd spokesperson Kabineh Ja'neh.
Chea on Wednesday dismissed the claim as "Lurd public relations."
"If that is so they have to stop fighting and pull back to their original positions at Tubmanburg," about 80km from Monrovia, he said.
Taylor prepared to quit
The defence minister also stressed that the embattled Taylor, a former warlord who played a central role in a seven-year rebel conflict that ended with his election in 1997, was prepared to quit but not under the current conditions.
Taylor, who now controls only a fifth of his country, last month accepted an asylum offer from Nigeria but said international peacekeepers must be in place before he leaves his war-torn country to ensure there is no bloodletting.
"The president has said he will go. He has already sent an advance team to inspect his would-be living quarters in Nigeria. But he cannot leave just like that," Chea said.
Anger mounts over Bush
Anger is mounting over US President George W Bush's refusal to heed international calls to lead a multinational peacekeeping force in the west African country, with which the United States is historically tied because it was founded in the 19th century by freed American slaves.
Nigeria, west Africa's military powerhouse, on Tuesday said it would not send the peacekeepers it has pledged without a ceasefire in Liberia.
International aid agencies have voiced growing concern about the humanitarian situation in Monrovia where tens of thousands are living rough amid an acute scarcity of food, water and medicines.
The UN refugee agency said it had lost contact with many of the 15 000 Sierra Leonean refugees in camps around Monrovia, while refugee evacuations by ship have also ground to a halt because of the fighting.
Last month, Lurd rebels staged their most audacious attack on Monrovia entering the centre of the city before withdrawing ahead of a June 17 truce, brokered by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), a west African regional bloc.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Taylor was to have gone into exile to pave the way for an interim government and fresh elections to end the ruinous war.
- AFX
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