Ex-combatants riot

Around 1,000 former members of Liberia’s security forces seeking salaries and demobilisation packages rioted on Thursday in a suburb of Monrovia injuring two policemen and setting up road blocks before they were dispersed by a joint team of United Nations and government police.

“All we want now is our money," a spokesman for the aggrieved ex-combatants Norrison Kayan, who said he was a colonel in the former Liberian Armed Forces, told reporters.

Click to read a detailed IRIN report on Liberia’s ‘Idle fighters’

The colonel said the ex-combatants he represents undertook the action to remind the Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the UN that they had made promises following protests made last year but that those promises had not been fulfilled.

"When we staged similar action last November a 10-man committee was set up to review the process concerning our benefits. We were told that the committee would get back to us within seven days but since then there have been no redress,” he said.

The protestors, who included former members of the army, police and paramilitary forces during Liberia's 1989-2003 civil war, were mostly armed with sticks. Some were injured and five were arrested, police spokesman Alvin Jask told IRIN.

The government said that the illegal action of the ex-combatants would not be tolerated. "An investigation process is taking place and if it is established that the demonstrators violated the law they will be sent to court," he said.

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