Bodies litter Monrovia streets as fighting resumes

The bodies of people killed in recent fighting littered the streets of Monrovia's western suburbs on Sunday night as heavy fighting resumed between forces loyal to President Charles Taylor and rebels trying to punch their way into the capital. An IRIN correspondent counted 113 dead bodies lying in the main avenue that leads north from Monrovia Freeport towards the western outskirts of the city where the crackle of automatic rifle fire and the thump of mortars resumed on Sunday evening after a lull in fighting earlier in the day. The government said on Sunday it had captured 80 fighters of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement as it retook some suburbs that had been briefly occupied by the rebels. Civilians returning to these areas reported that many homes had been systematically looted by Taylor's troops. Many residents of the capital also complained that government soldiers and militiamen had taken their cars and mobile phones. Military commanders told IRIN on Sunday night as the battle for Monrovia recommenced that LURD fighters who had been pushed out of the suburbs of Duala, Caldwell and Twelve Farm were fighting to regain lost ground. The government meanwhile appealed to all available medical staff to report urgently to the John F Kennedy hospital, the main hospital in Monrovia to treat civilians wounded in the conflict. The authorities were also trying to regroup tens of thousands of displaced people who had fled camps on the western outskirts of the Monrovia to escape the rebel advance in the Samuel Doe national sports stadium in the east end of the city, which remains relatively people. Relief workers said nearly 2,000 had gathered there by Sunday afternoon and 3,000 had sought refuge in a school. But with most foreign aid workers and other expatriates making their way to the EU mission and the US embassy in preparation for evacuation, it was difficult to see who would look after these people. The UN estimates that there about 200,000 people have been internally displaced within Liberia by four years of civil war. About half of these were living in eight camps on the outskirts of Monrovia. The latest fighting broke out on Wednesday as peace talks between Taylor's government and LURD formally opened in Ghana. But the talks have been stalled since then by the renewed fighting, which has brought the rebels closer than ever before to the heart of Monrovia, and by the indictment of Taylor for war crimes by the Special Court in Sierra Leone.The UN-backed court has issued an international arrest warrant for the Liberian leader, who is accused of backing rebels who killed, raped and maimed tens of thousands of people during Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war from 1991 to 2001. A second rebel faction, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), has so far failed to send a delegation to the peace talks in Akosombo, 100 km north of the Ghanaian capital Accra. Diplomats said a plane had been sent to the Cote d'Ivoire capital Abidjan to pick up a MODEL delegation, but it had so far failed to turn up. Diplomats and relief workers in West Africa say LURD, which controls much of northern Liberia, is strongly backed by neighbouring Guinea. They say MODEL, which has seized most of southeastern Liberia since it appeared on the scene three months ago, is supported by Cote d'Ivoire.