Soldiers ordered off streets, 215 bodies recovered

There were fewer armed men roaming the streets of Monrovia on Monday afternoon as Liberian President Charles Taylor's ordered his irregularly paid soldiers to stay in their barracks to curb rampant looting. Meanwhile, health workers continued to remove dead bodies from the streets, especially in the western suburbs which saw the worst of last week's fighting. They told IRIN that 215 corpses had been retrieved by Monday afternoon, but the search for more continued. On Sunday Taylor created a special task force to police the beleaguered city of one million people and ordered the rest of his soldiers and militiamen to get off the streets. This move was provoked by a fresh wave of looting by government fighters at the weekend after rebel forces abandoned their latest assault on the capital on Friday. Taylor said in a radio broadcast on Sunday that any soldier found loitering in the streets or illegally using his gun after 1400 GMT on Monday would be arrested and dealt with harshly by the special task force, which is headed by Defense Minister Daniel Chea. During their looting spree at the weekend, rampaging soldiers robbed civilians in the street at gunpoint, stole from houses and broke into warehouses at Monrovia Freeport. The World Food Programme (WFP) officer in charge, Gregory Blamo, told IRIN he was still checking how much of the WFP's 8,000 tonnes of food stocks stored in the port had been stolen. Officials at a government warehouse in the port said half the 6,000 bags of rice kept there had disappeared. Monrovia was calm, as the latest truce between government fighters and rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) entered a third day. A few shops opened for business, but most schools remained closed. The majority of internally displaced people who fled their camps on the outskirts of Monrovia during the latest LURD attack remained in the city centre, where they have sought shelter schools and the national sports stadium. They told IRIN they were still too uncertain about the security situation to return to their mud hut settlements on the edge of the city. Relief workers estimated at least 100,000 residents of these camps fled to seek safety in the city centre as a result of LURD's two abortive attempts to capture Monrovia during June. The government, LURD and another rebel group, the Movememt for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), signed a ceasefire agreement in the Ghanaian capital Accra on 17 June. This specified that a transitional government would be agreed upon within 30 days from which Taylor would be excluded. But the truce broke down within hours, Taylor withdrew an offer to resign and LURD mounted a a fresh assault on Monrovia on June 23. Following international pressure on both sides to halt the clashes, the rebels withdrew four days later. US president George Bush meanwhile urged Taylor, a former warlord who was elected president in 1997, step down "to stop further bloodshed." However, Bush did not spell out what the US would do to help bring peace to a country founded by American freed slaves in the early 19th century. The United Nations, Britain, France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have all urged Washington to take the lead in dispatching a multinational force to restore order in Liberia. Ghanaian President John Kufuor, the current chairman of ECOWAS, said over the weekend that the regional grouping would be prepared to contibute 5,000 troops to such a force.