Government allows relief agencies into Klay Town

Relief agencies have returned to Klay Town, north of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, to help thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) fleeing fighting between anti-government forces and the army some 35-50 km farther north, a UN humanitarian worker told IRIN on Thursday. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) returned on Wednesday to Klay Town, some 47 km north of Monrovia, Mohammed Siryon, national field officer for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Liberia, said. After getting permission from the Justice Ministry to go to Klay, at least 10 groups are now in the town providing aid, Siryon said. He said the ministry had told the NGOs they could not travel north of Klay. Groups present in Klay include Medecins sans Frontieres, which is providing water, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is providing sanitation services. Save the Children's Fund is giving aid to children and minimal health services, while the Lutheran World Service is putting up large transit tents. Siryon said the World Food Programme was sending a food assessment team to Klay: on Sunday the IDPs there did not have sufficient food, water and shelter. Some 1,500 people lived in Klay Town before the influx of IDPs, who fled their temporary camp at Sawmill on Sunday when anti-government forces entered it and ordered them to leave. "They fled with what they had on," Siryon said. He said some 50 troops from the government's Joint Security Command were manning a checkpoint at Klay Junction, an important crossroads about one km south of the town. One of the roads at this junction leads to Sierra Leone and the other to Tubmanburg, capital of Bomi County, where government troops are deployed. "The government wants the IDPs to stay in Klay Town until Tubmanburg is secure," Siryon said. Humanitarian workers said the government did not want thousands of IDPs heading into Monrovia, where many victims of earlier displacements still squat in unfinished and war-damaged buildings.