Food, medicine and blood in short supply

As a fresh ceasefire took hold in the Liberian capital Monrovia on Friday, the mortuary at the city's main hospital overflowed with corpses from the latest four-day battle between government and rebel forces for control of the city. Hundreds of sick and wounded people milled helplessly round the corridors of the John F Kennedy hospital. Overworked doctors and nurses said they had virtually run out of supplies of medicine and blood to treat the human tide of suffering. Soldiers arrived constantly with more bodies from the frontline, but overwhelmed hospital staff told an IRIN correspondent who visited the scene that they could not accept any more cadavers unless somewhere could be found to bury the heaps of corpses that already clogged the mortuary. Meanwhile more displaced people continued flocking to the Samuel Doe sports stadium to the east of the city centre. Thousands of people forced to leave their homes by two rebel attacks on the capital over the past three weeks have been sleeping in the open there, lashed by heavy rains. By Friday, supplies of food and drinking water at the stadium had run out completely. Several displaced people there told IRIN they had not eaten since Monday. Children cried with hunger as their helpless parents watched, unable to do anything. "Monrovia is in a state of violent chaos since the sudden collapse of the fragile ceasefire on 24 June," the aid agency Oxfam warned in a statement. "Shops are closed because owners are scared of looters and people are coming into the centre of the city to escape fighting on the outskirts. Food supplies are dwindling." Oxfam added: "The situation is extremely volatile and unpredictable. [Our staff] have seen a lot of dead bodies. People are roaming the streets looking for food." It urged the fighters to respect international humanitarian law, stop attacks on civilians and forced recruitment and provide free access for aid agencies. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said the few health facilities in Monrovia that were still functioning had been stretched to their limits, prompting MSF to turn two of its compounds in the Mamba Point diplomatic quarter into emergency hospitals with out-patient and in-patient facilities. On Wednesday 150 wounded came to seek treatment. On Thursday a further 50 turned up. The vast majority of people seeking treatment from MSF were civilians wounded by stray bullets and mortar shells. "One of the saddest things is that we have to turn away people who show up with signs of cholera, as we can not build an isolation ward in our compound," MSF doctor Nathalie Civet said. "We stabilise the wounded and perform minor surgery; for more complicated treatment we refer people to the John F Kennedy surgical ward," Civet said. "But we had to amputate an arm of a one-and-a-half year old baby. On Wednesday, three people died and we had to bury them on the beach. Yesterday again, three people died." The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, called for the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to fill the current security vacuum in the war-ravaged nation. Earlier the UK representative to the Council, Jeremy Greenstock, had suggested that the US lead an intervention force into Liberia. "[Lubbers] believes that whether the force is in the form of an expanded UNAMSIL [the UN peacekeeping force in neighbouring Sierra Leone] mandate, under the leadership of a UN Security Council member state, or through some other arrangement, something needs to be done now to stop the killing and end the suffering of Liberia's people," UNHCR said in a statement On Thursday night, US President George Bush echoed Liberian rebel demands that Liberian President Charles Taylor step down to avoid further bloodshed. Liberia, which was founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century, has been in a state of near constant civil war since Taylor launched a rebellion against the former military government of Samuel Doe in 1989. The government issued a statement "welcoming" Bush's expression of concern over Liberia, but avoiding comment on his call for Taylor to quit. "The government welcomes the interest the US government has taken in the Liberian conflict. [but] the government of Liberia calls on the international community to double its efforts to provide humanitarian relief to the displaced in Monrovia," the statement said. By Friday afternoon, the guns had fallen silent but looting continued on the streets, despite a directive by Defense Minister Daniel Chea that soldiers should maintain discipline. The government announced it was retrieving all vehicles looted by soldiers and was keeping them at a military base of the elite Anti-Terrorism Unit. Some 40 vehicles, including those of the Red Cross, were recovered on Friday morning. On Thursday, health minister, Peter Coleman, said in a radio broadcast that at least 200 people had been killed and 350 civilians and combatants wounded in the latest upsurge in fighting in Monrovia. Coleman 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. He urged the international community to urgently donate medical supplies and fuel to Liberia's over-stretched health services, saying the situation was out of hand.