Lull in fighting allows Monrovia residents to search for food

A million Liberians trapped by fierce fighting in the capital Monrovia took advantage of a lull in the battle on Thursday to venture out in search of scarce food and drinking water. Clashes were reported between President Charles Taylor's troops and the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement around the rebel-held port on Bushrod Island. Shooting was also heard around the Stockton bridge which links Bushrod Island to a ring-road that loops round the north of Monrovia to the city's eastern suburbs. Government forces appeared to be regaining some lost ground after retreating steadily against the strongest rebel attack yet on the capital. But the mortar barrages and heavy street fighting, which had kept most people indoors for the previous five days, died down. The lull gave an opportunity to aid workers an opportunity to collect corpses littering the streets and bury them on nearby beaches. LURD political advisor Charles Bennie told IRIN by telephone from the Liberian peace talks in Accra, Ghana, that rebel fighters were trying to observe a ceasefire. "We have told them to stop fighting, but remain in their present positions. But they will fight back if they are attacked by Taylor's forces," he said. The Liberian government softened its earlier demand that LURD pull back to the positions it occupied at Tubmanburg, 40 km north of Monrovia, before a ceasefire agreed on June 17. That truce has been torn to shreds by continued heavy fighting across the country. Defence Minister Daniel Chea told Reuters that the government would now accept a rebel withdrawal to the Po River, 21 km from the city centre, pending the arrival of peacekeepers. "We do not want to fight. We are just defending. They attacked. They need to pull back. They are the aggressors and I think there is a lot of diplomatic pressure on them," Chea said. Relief agencies estimate that more than 200,000 people - at least one in five of Monrovia's inhabitants - have been made homeless by three LURD attacks on the city over the past two months. The medical charity Merlin said over 40,000 displaced people were still gathered at the Samuel Doe sports stadium in the eastern suburbs, sleeping in the open, despite pouring rain. It said they had virtually no sanitation facilities or food supplies. Sam Brown, the head of the government Liberian Refugee, Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC) told IRIN: "There is a total breakdown of assistance to the displaced people." Relief agencies said tens of thousands of people throughout the city, were continuing to live rough with very little food or clean drinking water. There was virtually no proper sanitation and they warned of the growing risk of a cholera epidemic "It is very difficult for non-governmental organisations to move about in Monrovia and for the civilian population to get to aid points," Thierry Allafort-Duverger, the head of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Liberia, said. Paul Jaiblai, an Oxfam water engineer trapped in his office in Monrovia said: "We cannot find food to buy. We drank our last drop of water from the tank this morning. How are we going to manage? Only God knows," "More people will die if this conflict does not come to an end within the next week. People will die from hunger and diseases such as diarrhea and cholera," he added. In the Senegalese capital, Dakar, military chiefs and security ministers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) agreed on Wednesday that two Nigerian army battalions comprising 1,300 troops would be deployed to Liberia within a week. They are due to form the vanguard of an international peacekeeping force that will eventually be 5,000 strong. ECOWAS Executive Secretary Mohamed Ibn Chambas said details of the deployment, including the Nigerian troops' actual date on arrival, would be discussed at a follow-up meeting in the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown, on Thursday. "The force is not going there to take the parties on but just to help the deteriorating humanitarian situation. We hope that the parties will respect the ceasefire agreement that they have signed," Chambas said. The US would give US $10 million to help pay for the peacekeeping force, he added. A US government spokesman in Washington said President George Bush had not yet taken a decision on whether to send any US troops to Liberia. He has put a flotilla of three warships carrying 4,500 sailors and marines on stand by for possible deployment to the country, which has known little but civil war for the past 14 years. The first Nigerian troops to land in Liberia will include the 774-strong 15th battalion, which is currently on a UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, Patrick Coker, a spokesman of the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) said. Another batallion is due to come from Nigeria itself. The two batallions will be led by the chief of staff of the Nigerian army, General Martin Luther Agwai, who is a veteran of UN peacekeeping operations. Agwai served as the deputy force commander of UNAMSIL for two years and subsequently worked as a senior official of the department of peacekeping operations at UN headquarters in New York. Chambas told reporters in Dakar:"[His job] is to move the battalion to Monrovia as quickly as possible. If before fine, but not beyond a week," Chambas said.