Aid workers strive to maintain contact with IDPs

Aid workers, who this week pulled out of Liberia's northwestern Gbarpolu county because of fresh fighting, were on Friday striving to maintain contact with internally displaced people (IDPs) in the camps of Gemana and Bopolu, to ensure that basic services remain available to them. "We are very concerned that health, social and food services are maintained," Jane Gibreel, Programme Director for Save the Children Fund (SCF), told IRIN from the capital Monrovia. She explained that it had become very difficult to work in the area because of insecurity and lack of proper infrastructure. But, Gibreel said, aid workers helped by the government, were trying to find other ways to reach the needy. "An influx of people from Belle Fassama (in Gbarpolu County) is moving towards the Bopolu displaced camp which already has a population of 2,000," she said. There were no reports as yet on the numbers of the displaced or casualties, she said. There was equally no information that displaced people were moving into Gemana camp which has a population of 7,000. "A team from SCF which was to travel to Bopolu to check on the situation encountered some delay and would leave possibly by Monday," Gibreel added. Liberia's President Charles Taylor, on Thursday, reportedly told a religious meeting in Monrovia that "hundreds" had been killed over the past two days in rebel attacks in the towns of Belle Fassama and Belle Baloma, adjacent to the war-wracked northern Lofa County. "Yesterday and today forces entered Belle Fassama and murdered hundreds of people. As we speak, active combat is going on between government forces and dissidents in Belle Fassama," AFP quoted Taylor as saying. Aid workers from the Lutheran World Federation, SCF, World Vision and the local Red Cross were on Monday forced to withdraw their teams to Monrovia after fresh fighting erupted between suspected dissidents and government troops. "As aid agencies, our biggest fear is the possibility of relocation. Relocation would exert a lot of pressure on the NGOs resource-wise and it will pose physical risk to the civilians in this area which is now not as safe as it appears," an aid worker told IRIN on Friday. "The situation is really worrying." A vaccination team heading for a polio vaccination campaign in Bopolu was forced to abandon its trip on Sunday after it encountered civilians fleeing intense fighting in Belle Fassama, some 100 km north of Bopolu, he said. A rented Ministry of Health vehicle in which the vaccination team were travelling was commandeered on Sunday evening. "Following the incidents, all staff members of the agencies decided to pull out and return to Monrovia," he added. Fighting, the source said, intensified mid-week but "we don't know who exactly is fighting". "Some people say they are dissidents from Guinea while others say it is an interfactional fighting by government forces." On Thursday BBC reported that the rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), was suspected to be involved in this week's fighting. The group has been fighting in northern Liberia since 1998 for the overthrow of government. Since September, it has intensified its attacks, BBC added.