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Mortar rips through schoolyard
25/07/2003 15:26 - (SA)
Monrovia - Erica Soe, 20 years old, sobs in shock and terror, her eyes fixed on seven blood-stained bodies - those of friends she was talking to only minutes before a mortar bomb fell in a Monrovia schoolyard on Friday morning.
"They are not fighting, they are finishing us," she weeps. "I was just seated here, brushing my teeth. Then there was the explosion, then the dead bodies."
The six bodies have already been wrapped in white bags. That of a young man, his eyes still open, lies in a pool of blood, his head resting on the cross-bar of a chair.
It was about 09:30 at the Newport primary school, used by thousands of displaced Liberians seeking refuge from a fresh wave of fighting between government and rebel forces vying for control of the capital.
At least a dozen people were killed and scores more injured in the mortar attack, aid workers said.
People were waking up
A mortar round exploded in the schoolyard as people were washing up and drinking their morning coffee.
"We are already dying of hunger, there is shellings, we don't know where to go, where to hide.... We are just dying. I'm the only survivor of that group. Thank God I have nothing," says Fred Aidoo, 41.
Shell fragments and sandals are scattered across the concrete surface, which is covered in pools of blood. The survivors watch, horrified and traumatised. Women wail in grief.
For almost an hour on Friday morning more than 15 mortar rounds crashed into the centre of Monrovia, mostly in the districts of Newport Street and Mamba Point, the diplomatic quarter where the US embassy and the hotel where international journalists are staying are located.
Rebels fired shells
According to Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea, the shells were fired by rebels belonging to Lurd (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy) who have been fighting forces loyal to President Charles Taylor for nearly five years and who launched a new assault on July 19.
Another shell exploded on Friday just outside a clinic operated by Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Frontiers: MSF) at Mamba Point, killing four people and wounding several others.
"My brother's wife has been heavily wounded, her sister died, it has become very dangerous around here. I will move my whole family to Sinkor (east of the capital, so far untouched by the fighting)," says Francis Glago, who lives in the two-storey shell-scarred house.
"We have counted about 10 dead and between 35 and 40 wounded after this bombardment. We are trying to see if there are other wounded people elsewhere. At the moment it's calm and they can come here," says Alain Kassa, a senior MSF official.
Lack of food and water
Aid workers in the besieged city have reported an acute lack of food and water for an estimated 200 000 displaced civilians - one-fifth of Monrovia's total population. Sanitation is practically nil, and humanitarian camps are overrun and strapped for the most basic medicines and supplies.
"The people cannot hold on, they are dying of cholera. There are so many wounded people we cannot even take them all in. There are severe problems with getting water, there is no food, I don't know how they hold on," Kassa adds.
- AFX
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