NGOs return to troubled western county

Aid agencies have returned to Gbarpolu County in western Liberia after being forced to withdraw from the area last week when fierce fighting broke out between suspected rebels and government troops. Humanitarian workers told IRIN on Thursday that the situation had returned to normal in and around camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) which they had vacated. "We are back in Bopolu and Gemana," Jane Gibreel, programme director for Save the Children Fund (SCF) told IRIN. "Our assessment team went to Bopolu at the weekend and reported that everything was back to normal so our staff moved back on Tuesday." An SCF assessment team will visit Gemana camp on Wednesday to see if there are any needs, she added. The SCF team reported the arrival of 1,887 more people at the Bopolu camp, mainly from in and around Belle Fassama, some 100 km farther north. "This is quite a significant addition resulting in substantial shelter and food needs," Gibreel noted. "We are quite reassured of the safety in the area now," she added. Bopolu camp for the displaced had a population of 2,000. The Gemana IDP camp registered some 130 new arrivals which, according to Gibreel, is just "a normal trickle". Gemana camp is host to 7,000 people. Staff of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) also returned to Bopolu on Tuesday. More staff were due to go back on Thursday, Moses Vankpanah, agriculture planning assistant at LWF, told IRIN. "We are busy constructing shelter for newly arrived IDPs," he said. "We will continue with the agriculture programmes too." Fighting broke out in the middle of last week between suspected dissidents of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and government soldiers. LURD has been fighting in northwestern Liberia since 1998 to overthrow the government. Since September, it has intensified its attacks, BBC reported. Most of the fighting has been concentrated in Lofa County, which is north of Gbarpolu. A team heading for a polio vaccination campaign in Bopolu was forced to abandon its trip after it encountered civilians fleeing intense fighting in Belle Fassama, aid workers told IRIN last week. A rented Ministry of Health vehicle in which the vaccination team were travelling was commandeered. Following the incidents, the LWF, SCF, the World Vision and the local Red Cross decided to pull out and return to Monrovia. Liberia's President Charles Taylor reportedly told a religious meeting last Thursday in Monrovia that "hundreds" had been killed over two days in rebel attacks in the towns of Belle Fassama and Belle Baloma, adjacent to Lofa County. Defence Minister Daniel Chea told journalists at the weekend that the dissidents killed mostly women and children and set several villages ablaze, but he declined to give numbers. He said they had used "remote jungle paths bypassing the position of the Marine Division of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) in Fassama to carry out the massacre".