Army launches “all out offensive” against dissidents

President Charles Taylor on Tuesday gave his army 72 hours to flush dissidents from upper Lofa County, in the north of Liberia, a media source told IRIN.

“We have the capacity to do so and this we will do,” Defence Minister Daniel Chea said at a news conference, according to the source.

Chea said the Liberian government’s political restraint in dealing with the crisis had slowed Taylor’s effort to end the month-long insurgency which Monrovia says is backed by Guinea. Liberia has refused to accept Conakry’s denial of non-involvement in the insurgency.

Chea has vowed to “go all out with heavy fireworks” to expel the dissidents because enough time had been given to their collaborators “to clear their backyard of dissidents’ activities” but he fell short of saying the army would pursue the dissidents into Guinea.

Chea said the insurgents attacked army positions in Selega and Bakedu towns, near Voinjama, on Tuesday. The rebels - thought to be from former civil war factions that had been opposed to Taylor’s group - began attacking Voinjama on 8 July.

Chea would not say on Tuesday who was in control of the city, parts of which have reportedly changed hands over the past month. He spoke of intense engagement between government troops and the dissidents outside Voinjama but declined to give battlefield casualties.

Chea rejected rumours that the government had orchestrated the fighting in Voinjama to create a corridor to bring in rebel Revolutionary United Front fighters wounded in a recent attack on their positions by UN peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, PANA reported.