Relief agencies reach out to desperate civilians

The UK-based relief agency, Merlin, said on Thursday it had started providing emergency medical services to at least 125,000 people trapped without a single doctor in southeastern Liberia, around the rebel-held towns of Zwedru and Greenville. The United Nations meanwhile sent an exploratory mission by helicopter to Lofa County in Northwestern Liberia, which has been off-limits to relief workers for four years. And the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched a drive to reunite more than 700 Liberian children, discovered in other parts of West Africa, with their parents. Merlin said it had found health facilities in the southeast looted, medical staff displaced and virtually no health services operating in the area. It is controlled by the smaller of Liberia's two rebel groups, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). Merlin said in a statement that the nearest referral hospital to Zwedru, the capital of Grand Gedeh County was in Guiglo, 140 km away across the border in Cote d'Ivoire. The situation was no better in the port of Greenville, the administrative headquarters of Sinoe county, it added. "With large swathes of the population in these counties unable to access any form of healthcare, it is urgent that we respond quickly to try and re-establish primary health services and get drugs and equipment to areas where they are most needed," Clement Peter, Merlin's Medical Coordinator in Liberia said. "Health services here have essentially broken down, and there is often no access to clean water, as the majority of hand pumps and wells are not functioning or not chlorinated." The UN mission to Voinjama flew to the diamond-producing region controlled by the larger Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement, which has been out of bounds for relief workers since 1999. In Monrovia, the ICRC launched its campaign in partnership with the Liberian Red Cross Society. It is called "Where Are Our Parents?" The ICRC said it would display posters with pictures of the 707 children in public places like markets, schools, hospitals, displaced and refugee camps in order to locate the relatives of the children. "Most of those children fled the war in Lofa County into Guinea. The rest of them were registered by the ICRC in Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone," Marcel Stoessel of the ICRC tracing department in Liberia told reporters. Marcel said the ICRC had so far reunited 185 children with their families in Monrovia, since fighting ended in August. In December 2002 and March 2003, the organisation launched a similar poster campaigns in Liberia, which Marcel described as "very rewarding" Meanwhile, the United Nations reported further clashes between government and LURD fighters near Gbarnga in Bong County, 150 km north of Monrovia, in violation of the 18 August peace agreement. The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Liberia, Abou Moussa said: "We are a little disturbed from information regarding clashes between LURD and government forces in a place outside of Gbarnga. We imagine that each time you have military clashes it is always the civilians that suffer from those kinds of situations." He said UN peacekeepers were investigating the reported clash, the latest of several in the region, but the overall security situation in Liberia was continuing to improve. A transitional government, led by independent businessman Gyude Bryant took power on Tuesday to rebuild the country's infrastructure, shattered by 14 years of civil war, and organise fresh elections in 2005. Moussa told reporters the UN was extending a ban on carrying weapons in Monrovia to the camps for displaced people on the outskirts of the city. Like the capital of more than one million people, these camps would henceforth become an "arms-free zone," he said. "Monrovia has been declared arms-free zone. That does not mean that the arms have completely disappeared from Monrovia. We however do see less arms on the streets of Monrovia. This measure has been extended to camps," Moussa said.