Rebels deploy in eastern Monrovia suburbs

Liberian rebels fighting President Charles Taylor's troops in the capital, Monrovia, took advantage of a lull in fighting on Thursday to send troops from the western to the eastern suburbs of the city, where Taylor and most senior government officials live. The move appeared to presage the opening of a second front aimed at isolating Taylor's forces in Monrovia from the interior of the country, but residents in the eastern suburbs said on Thursday afternoon that the sector remained quiet. Eyewitnesses said a large group of rebels crossed the Stockton Creek bridge, that links the Freeport area of western Monrovia with the eastern Gardnersville area, shortly after dawn. They headed towards the main highway that leads north from the capital towards Kakata, Gbarnga, Ganta and the Guinean border, and established positions in the Battery factory area. The Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement had previously only attempted to attack Monrovia from the northwest along the road that leads to Kley Junction, Bomi Hills and the Sierra Leone border. Sporadic gunfire continued in the city centre and the western suburbs on Thursday morning making a mockery of a ceasefire agreed at peace talks in the Ghanaian capital Accra on June 17. The government said it had driven the rebels back to the area around St Paul's River Bridge - the main link between Bushrod Island and the interior, about 10 km from the city centre. But eyewitnesses said LURD fighters had held the ground on Bushrod Island where they continued to control Monrovia's deep-water port. However they had stopped pounding government positions with heavy artillery. The shell fire that reverberated through the city centre throughout Wednesday, had died down. Health Minister, Peter Coleman, said in a radio broadcast that over 200 people had been killed and over 350 civilians and combatants wounded in the latest upsurge in fighting in Monrovia. Most of the wounded had been taken to John F Kennedy hospital. A spokesman for LURD, Mohammed Kamara, told the BBC that the rebels would not stop fighting until they took full control of Monrovia. "If Taylor wants peace, we will give him peace. But the only sound Taylor understands is the sound of AK-47 and that is what we are playing for him," Kamara was quoted as saying. Another LURD official told IRIN in the Ghanaian capital Accra: "We are going all out this time." Eyewitnesses said Taylor's soldiers and militiamen had gone on a massive looting spree. Thousands of displaced people were meanwhile running out of food and also breaking into closed shops to find something to eat. "Food is running out in Monrovia," a resident told IRIN. "People are desperate for something to eat." Government fighters commandeered taxis and the vehicles of relief organisations and used some of them to ferry the wounded away from the battle lines. Others were being used as improvised battle wagons. Eyewitnesses saw militiamen ripping the doors and windscreens off taxis to turn them into fighting vehicles and a Catholic Relief Services truck full of armed men. Taylor was seen on Thursday morning traveling from his residence to the city centre and the frontline, in a heavily guarded convoy. A day earlier he pledged in a radio broadcast that he would "fight to the bitter end." The health minister said Monrovia's main John F Kennedy hospital was overcrowded and desperately short of medical supplies and fuel to keep its electricity generator going. He appealed for the residents of the capital to come forward and donate blood. He also appealed to the security forces to allow medical staff to go to their place of work without harassment. Coleman also urged the international community to urgently donate medical supplies and fuel to Liberia's over-stretched health services. "I appeal to the international community to come in and assist the Liberian people. The situation is out of hand," he said. Tete Korboi Brooks, executive director of the medical relief organisation, MERCI, told IRIN that the fighting had made it difficult for her organisation to send an ambulance to collect "the very many" wounded from the suburbs. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), called in a statement for the respect of international law. It urged the warring sides not to attack civilians. The ICRC said several displaced people had been killed and about 30 wounded during fighting in the centre of Monrovia. Some of the wounded were hit by mortar shells fired by rebels into the city centre. One that fell near the US embassy in the exclusive Mamba Point area killed several people and injured many others, aid workers said. The injured were among several thousand people who had gathered there to demand refuge at the embassy. Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) evacuated 35 cholera patients from Monrovia's Redemption hospital in the western suburbs to its compound at Mamba Point. "These people have gone through hell and back already, and now they face hell again," MSF operational director, Christopher Stokes said. "The Liberians in the camps and in the streets have reached the absolute limit of what you could ask anyone to cope with." In New York, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed deep concern at the renewed fighting and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. "This development constitutes a flagrant violation of the recently concluded ceasefire agreement and casts a shadow on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)-facilitated peace talks in Accra, which had raised high hopes for the peaceful settlement of the conflict," Annan said. The peace talks facilitator, General Abdulsalami Abubakar of Nigeria, told a news conference on Wednesday that ECOWAS was considering calling an African summit of heads of state to revive the faltering peace process The upsurge in fighting came as a UN Security Council mission led by the Ambassador of the United Kingdom, Jeremy Greenstock, embarked on a tour of West Africa to assess the prospects for peace and closer cooperation in eight countries, including Liberia. Greenstock told a news conference in New York that the Security Council should find ways of exerting extra pressure on Taylor to compromise with the other Liberian belligerents, who the Security Council believed, had not served the interest of the Liberian people. "It was time for a change and time to put the Liberian people first, rather than the political ambitions of one faction or another." Greenstock said. Taylor would have to decide what part he wished to play in that change, but the failure of his government to run a stable Liberia and his failure to respond to the indictment had to be taken into account, he added. A UN-backed court in Sierra Leone has indicted Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in fuelling that country's 1999-2001 civil war of 1991-2001. On Wednesday, the Swiss government froze the bank accounts of Taylor and several of his lieutenants at the Court's request. Taylor has demanded that the indictment be lifted "for the sake of peace in Liberia and the subregion." Special Court prosecutor David Crane told a news conference in the Sierra Leonean capital Freetown on Wednesday that he wanted Taylor to be captured alive to answer the charges. "He should be turned over to us alive so that he can be brought before justice. He an absolute right to a fair and open trial," Crane said. "Taylor is an indicted war criminal, someone who has destabilised this region since he left Libya in 1988/89.I have a very strong moral grounding in this. We are going to get Charles Taylor I can assure you," Crane said. The latest battle for Monrovia started over the weekend. LURD fighters advanced into its western outskirts on Tuesday, sending thousands of displaced people fleeing to the city centre. Another rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), which controls most of southeastern Liberia, has also reported heavy fighting with Taylor's forces.