Humanitarian workers dispersed by fighting, nine reach Cote d'Ivoire

Nine out of 87 humanitarian workers based in Zwedru, northeastern Liberia, who lost contact on Thursday with their colleagues in the capital, Monrovia, arrived on Friday morning in Guiglo, western Cote d'Ivoire. The workers had scattered as they sought cover during fighting on Wednesday night, allegedly between Liberian government forces and rebels coming from Cote d'Ivoire. UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Liberia, Marc Destanne de Bernis, told IRIN on Friday: "We received information that three Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) staff and two others from Action Contre la Faim (ACF) arrived safely in Guiglo this morning." The World Food Programme (WFP) in Abidjan reported on Friday that three staff members and another from a partner agency who had been missing in northeastern Liberia had also arrived in Guiglo and were on their way to the western town of Daloa. An official told IRIN that the agency had received information from rebels on the Liberian side that one other WFP staff who was still in Liberia would be released on Saturday. Of the 87 missing aid workers, two were from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), four from WFP, about 40 from ACF, some 35 from MSF-France and six from Merlin-UK. They included national and international staff. De Bernis told IRIN contact was lost with the humanitarian workers on Thursday morning. No information was available on the rest of the workers. Meanwhile, fighting between government forces and insurgents continued on the outskirts of Zwedru. It was not clear whether the insurgents were rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) group. Defence sources said pockets of insurgents believed to have entered from the Ivorian side of the border attacked Toe Town and Zleh Town, in Grand Gedeh County on Wednesday and moved towards Zwedru, which is the county's capital. This was the second time that insurgents had launched attacks on Grand Gedeh in less than a month. During the first attack - against Toe Town - three workers of the Adventist Relief and Development Agency (ADRA) were killed. Zwedru hosted thousands of Ivorian refugees and third-country nationals who had fled an armed conflict in neigbouring Cote d'Ivoire. UNHCR has lost contact with some 5,000 Ivorians and other West Africans at the Zwedru transit centre, a UNHCR spokesperson said in Geneva on Thursday. There were fears that they might have been caught up in the clashes. "We have been in contact briefly with our two local staff who had remained behind this afternoon. They managed to flee to the south of Zwedru," Theo Vodounou, UNHCR’s emergency co-coordinator for border operations, said in Monrovia on Thursday. "However, we have no information on the whereabouts of the refugees." The fighting erupted as UNHCR was making plans to move all refugees from Zwedru to another transit centre in Harper, on the Atlantic coast, because of the growing insecurity in Grand Gedeh. Fighting has also been taking place in western and central Liberia. President Charles Taylor disclosed that his government had already informed the United Nations that it would import arms to defend "the sovereignty of Liberia". He told reporters at a centre for displaced persons just outside Monrovia on Wednesday that this action was based on the UN Charter which, he said, allowed every member state to defend itself in the face of aggression. Liberia is under a UN Security Council arms embargo since 2001 for reportedly fuelling the Sierra Leonean crisis by supporting rebels there.