10,000 displaced by skirmishes in Nimba County

At least 10,000 civilians fleeing skirmishes between former government fighters and MODEL rebels in Nimba County in north central Liberia, have sought shelter in the relatively unscathed town of Saclepea, relief workers said on Monday. They told a UN assessment mission visiting Saclepea by helicopter that the displaced people had arrived over the past week. They said the civilians had fled fleeing fighting between forces loyal to the former government of Charles Taylor, which control Saclepea, and MODEL rebels advancing towards the town from Tapeta, 60 km to the south. The fighting flared up at the end of October, but the relief workers in Saclepea, once a bustling market town of 15,000 people, said it finally died down on 4 November. "We have a very serious problem coping with the daily influx of the displaced. Shelter, food and medication are their immediate needs," Cyrus Saye, a relief worker with the Liberian Red Cross Society said. "More than 3,000 weary and distressed IDPs [internally displaced persons] are in Loryee village, one the biggest villages south of Saclepea on the road linking to Tapeta," he added. Relief workers said Saclepea, 285 km northeast of the capital Monrovia, was the only town in Nimba county which had not been heavily damaged by fighting earlier this year. Clashes erupted in February when fighters of MODEL (Movement for Democracy in Liberia) appeared on the scene and began to rapidly capture all of southern and eastern Liberia. LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy), a longer established rebel movement, meanwhile began attacking Nimba Country from the west Although UN peacekeepers have not yet been deployed to Saclepea, there was no sign of gunmen in the town when the UN humanitarian mission visited on Monday. Residents could be seen selling cigarettes, batteries, plantain, and even used clothing at street stalls. They said some of the goods had come from Diecke, a border town in neighbouring Guinea, 60 km to the northwest. An IRIN correspondent who accompanied the UN mission saw more than 100 displaced persons being registered at the Johnny Voker School in the town center. Its corridors and classrooms were crowded with people who had fled their homes to escape the recent fighting. Most were old women and children who said they slept at night on the bare school floor. Mather Dahn, an elderly woman from Graie, a small town on the main road to Tapita, said she walked in the forest for four hungry days before reaching Saclepea. "I and my three children spent four days walking in the bush without eating and we only lived on creek water," she said. Moses Korwee, a teacher displaced from his home in Tapeta, said: "We are tired running around. Let the UN talk to the fighters to stop killing us." General Tommy Biddle, the commander of the pro-Taylor forces in Saclepea, told IRIN that Graie was a buffer zone between his forces and MODEL. But he insisted that the skirmishes in that area had ceased. Graie, about four hours drive south of Saclepea on a pot-holed dirt road, was the scene of intense battles at the beginning of November. The scale of the clashes prompted General Daniel Opande, the head of the UN peacekeeping force in Liberia, to visit the area by helicopter last week, accompanied by senior government and MODEL commanders, to make peace. Biddle said: "For us, it will be good for UNMIL to deploy between Saclepea and Tapeta. In my own military analysis, if the troops are deployed, there would be no more fighting in that entire region." "Helicopter patrol is not sufficient. We want the UN to deploy and patrol on land because they would be able to detect any troop movement and their presence would weaken the spirit of fighters who may want to take up arms," he added. However, Opande has only 5,000 troops on the ground at present and he is reluctant to stretch them too thinly on the ground. The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL)does not expect to reach its full strength of 15,000 men until March. Opande told reporters last week after visiting Saclepea that UN peacekeepers patrolled the road from Monrovia to the nearby town of Sanniquellie every two days, but he could not afford to deploy men permanently in Nimba County at present. Biddle said despite the warning by UNMIL to MODEL rebels to withdraw from Graie to Tapeta, MODEL fighters still occupied the town and were refusing to retreat. The warring parties in Liberia signed a peace agreement in August that paved the way for businessman Gyude Bryant to take power at the head of a broad-based transitional government on 14 October. But LURD, MODEL and soldiers and militiamen loyal to former president Taylor still control most of the interior. Trucks and buses have resumed plying the road from Saclepea, although continuing insecurity in the area means that fares have more than doubled from what they were in February before the road was cut by fighting between government troops and LURD fighters near Ganta. On Monday a 21-seater mini-bus could be seen in Saclepea loading up with plantain and palm oil before heading for the capital. "Before the war in Nimba, the cost of travel from Monrovia to Saclepea was about 650 Liberian dollars (US $15). Now it is 1,500 Liberian dollars (US $35)," Joseph Mehn, a resident of Saclepea said.