NGOs relocate to Sawmill

Aid workers and internally displaced people (IDPs) were forced to flee Bopolu camp on Friday after fresh fighting erupted in northwestern Liberia, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday. Diplomats in the capital Monrovia as well told IRIN that the situation in the north and northwest of the country had "worsened" since Friday. "There were reports of heavy gunfire heard from north of Bopolu and everybody from the camp just fled," an aid worker told IRIN. NGOs and government authorities converged in Sawmill town, in Central Liberia, at the weekend from where they are responding to needs of more than 4,000 displaced people who have reached the town, the source said. "We are thinking of finally relocating the displaced people to Tubmanburg [also in the northwest]," the source added. The NGOs at Sawmill were the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) who were the last to leave Bopolu on Saturday, Save the Children Fund, Medecins Sans Frontieres, WFP, the International Committee for the Red Cross, and Action Contre la Faim (ACF), the source said. In a statement on Tuesday, the NGO Action by Churches Together (ACT) said renewed fighting has sent more than 5,000 fleeing. "The people on the move are in total panic and these are mostly women and children who claim to have lost most of what little they possessed," ACT statement said. Aid agencies returned to Gbarpolu County in northwestern Liberia last Tuesday after withdrawing from Bopolu and Gemana displaced people's camps in late November when fierce fighting broke out between suspected rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and government troops. Liberia's President Charles Taylor 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. An Information Ministry statement said at the weekend that the rebels were reportedly heading for the town of Kungbor on the Sierra Leonean border in an attempt to regroup. "The intent of the fighters is to launch a bogus attack on Sierra Leone from Liberia so that it will appear like Liberia has attacked Sierra Leone. This is worrisome because Liberia enjoys good relations with Sierra Leone," BBC quoted Liberia's Defence Minister Daniel Chea as saying at the weekend. The fighters had in the recent weeks intensified their fight against government troops in the north and northwestern part of Liberia. There have been claims and counter-claims of control of the contested towns by the government and rebels. The Liberian Deputy Security Minister Emmet Ross was killed in an ambush in the northern county of Lofa last week.