Agencies to access rural Liberia via neighbouring countries

Relief agencies plan to reach- through Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea-thousands of civilians in urgent need of help in areas of war-torn Liberia that are far away from the capital, Monrovia, and difficult to reach due to widespread insecurity and bad roads. "We are hoping to start this in the next days because there are tens of thousands of internally displaced and vulnerable people in those parts of Liberia who need urgent humanitarian assistance," Ross Mountain, the United Nations Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Liberia said. "We are in discussions with our partner United Nations agencies in Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea to explore their side of the border side, especially on the eastern and northern parts of Liberia," Mountain told reporters in Monrovia on Tuesday. Mountain said negotiations were going between the humanitarian community and the leaders of the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), which controls the southeast of Liberia to allow unhindered access by agencies from across the border with Cote d'Ivoire. "We are hoping to get a relief boat to dock at Harper port soon," he said. Harper is a provincial headquarters of Maryland County and lies just across border from Tabou in Cote d’Ivoire. Astrid Van Genderen Stort, spokeswoman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said that some 38,000 Ivorian refugees, 45,000 Liberian returnees and 15,000 nationals of other West African countries, who were caught up by war up in the forests of the southeastern region, were among the civilians in urgent need of help. The civilians, she added, fled into Liberia during fighting in western Cote d'Ivoire last year. However UNHCR lost contact with them when fighting intensified between government fighters and MODEL rebels in southeastern Liberia early this year. "UNHCR is trying hard to get access to those refugees, returnees and third country nationals who are trapped inside Liberia," the spokeswomen said. MODEL controls Grand Gedeh, Grand Kru, River Gee and Maryland counties and parts of Nimba County that are close to Cote d’Ivoire. The group also controls Rivercess, Sinoe and Grand Bassa counties. The main rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) controls Lofa, Bong and parts of Nimba county that share the border with Guinea. Meanwhile relief workers who accessed Buchanan, the provincial headquarters of Bassa, 120 km southeast of Monrovia, told IRIN on Tuesday that a cholera epidemic had broken out in the city three days ago. "Reported cholera cases have risen from five to 216 and we are preparing to carry out a massive chlorination of wells there," a relief worker said. On Friday, the World Health Organization reported that corpses of fighters killed in fighting in Buchanan were found in wells, posing another threat to public health. A local NGO has been contacted to remove the corpses and clean the wells.