Nigeria evacuates 3,000 people from Monrovia

More than 3,000 people have been evacuated from Liberia in the past three days as the Nigerian authorities begin to move an estimated 6,000 of its citizens to safety from the war-torn country, officials said on Thursday. The head of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Shuaibu Makarfi, said daily chartered flights from Monrovia since Monday have brought in more than 2,000 Nigerians, 700 Liberians and a smaller number of other West Africans from Ghana and Sierra Leone. The evacuation was in response to the recent upsurge of fighting between rebels and troops loyal to President Charles Taylor, which reached the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia, last week and left at least 300 people dead. French troops had led the evacuation of foreigners from Monrovia, taking mostly Europeans and Americans and others with foreign passports. Makarfi said the flights were meant to ferry Nigerians to safety, but had to take along many Liberians still desperate to leave their country despite the ceasefire between rebels and the government signed after days of talks in Ghana. "Some of them were claiming to be Nigerians but (inspite of that) we could not reject them," he said. The representative for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Nigeria, Eusebe Hounsokou, told a local television, AIT, the agency had taken over the process of resettling the refugees arriving from Monrovia. "We know where they're coming from and we know why they're coming here," he said. At the Lagos office of the UNHCR on Thursday, hundreds of Liberians lined up in different queues as they went through registration formalities. Many of them said they were grateful to be out of danger while others worried about family members left behind. Saydee Cooper, 25, said he had left Liberia to avoid being recruited to fight with any of the warring factions. "Both sides want to recruit young people, and if you don't fight for them they think you're against them," he told IRIN. Despite the ceasefire he sees little hope for lasting peace soon, suspecting that one of the sides would like to go for total victory before long. "I'm glad to be out of Liberia, and unless I see UN troops on ground there I won't go back," he added.