Exodus from fighting around Totota continues

Tens of thousands of frightened civilians continued to flee on foot from a fresh outbreak of fighting aroung the town of Totota in central Liberia on Thursday. Relief workers said that over the past three days about 60,000 had fled on foot from Totota to Salala, 20 km further south along the main road to the capital Monrovia. There they had crowded in an existing camp for people displaced by Liberia's 14-year-old civil war, tripling its population from 30,000 to 90,000 in just 48 hours. "We need to try to stop this movement now and provide some security to these desperate people," said Kamel Deriche, UNHCR's senior emergency administrator said. "If we don't, there is a great likelihood that these people will walk all the way to Monrovia, seen as the only safe haven these days in Liberia." An IRIN correspondent who visited Salala on Thursday saw thousands of people who were doing just that. They had trudged through the town and were walking on down the main road towards Monrovia, 90 km away. Many of the new arrivals in Salala camp were breaking off tree branches to build themselves crude shelters to afford some protection from the pouring rain. They complained of extensive harassment and looting by government fighters. Many had been stopped on the road by militiamen as they were fleeing and had been robbed of their few remaining valuables. The 2,000-strong force of West African peacekeepers in Liberia known as ECOMIL sent a patrol from Monrovia up the road to Totota to try and restore confidence among the frightened civilians. At the same time, two Harrier ground attack jets from a US naval task force offshore roared overhead. But Liberian government commanders said fighting with rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement was continuing at the village of Kolela about 20 km west of Totota. “The clashes started at about 2.00 pm. One of our commanders, T-Boy, has returned for reinforcements,” Adam Sirleaf, the government's field artillery commander in Salala told IRIN. "There are bodies on the road from between Ziensu and Kolela. People have been killed, especially women and children,” Sirleaf added. The clashes, which began on Tuesday, appeared to consist of a series of minor skirmishes rather than a set-piece battle. However, they triggered a massive movement of civilians because Totota, a town of 75,000 people, was surrounded by four camps holding a further 60,000 to 70,000 who had been displaced from their homes by earlier fighting. Some of those fleeing Totota on Wednesday said one of the camps had been occupied and looted by government militiamen. Defence Minister Daniel Chea said on Thursday that he had told his men to stop shooting, in accordance with a peace agrement signed between the government and two rebel movements on 18 August. “Our men have stopped fighting, but the LURD rebels are continuing to push for more territory by attacking us,” he told IRIN in Monrovia. “I am trying to arrange a meeting with the LURD commanders together with ECOMIL so that we can sort out this problem,” he added. Military sources said ECOMIL would not establish a permanent presence in Totota yet because it did not have enough manpower, but it would maintain daily patrols from its base in Monrovia. “It would mean deploying men along a 100-km long stretch from Monrovia through Kakata and perhaps upto Gbarnga [150 km north of Monrovia]. The capacity to do that is still lacking,” one source said. ECOMIL is due to reach its full strength of 3,250 troops within the next few days, but UN officials are hoping that a further 15,000 peacekeepers from other parts of the world will start arriving from October once the force is given a full UN mandate. An ECOMIL reconnaissance team in four vehicles passed through Salala and visited Totota amid reports of an imminent rebel attack on the town. People fleeing on foot from Totota told IRIN that all four camps around the town were now completely empty. Many inhabitants of Totota town and nearby villages had also decided to join the exodus, they added. Relief agencies in Monrovia sent emergency supplies to Salala on Thursday and discussed plans for a new overflow camp at Kakata further down the road towards the capital. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) sent trucks to Salala carrying plastic sheets, water and high-protein biscuits provided by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and various non-governmental agencies. Mulbah Kennedy, the coordinator of Salala camp told IRIN that 90,000 people were now sheltering in the camp that was originally built to house 7,000. Makeshift tents were being put up to accommodate the influx, he added. Meanwhile, diplomatic sources in Monrovia said tension had risen in the port city of Buchanan, 120 km southeast of Monrovia, ahead of the expected deployment of ECOMIL forces there on Friday. Buchanan is controlled by the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), a rebel group that controls the south and east of the country. MODEL chairman Thomas Nimely was expected to visit Buchanan on Friday as the peacekeepers arrived. The sources said his fighters had set up additional roadblocks severely restricting access to more than 30,000 displaced people in the city. Several relief agencies said they were planning to start distributing food to these people on Saturday. Many of them fled to Buchanan to escape the fighting in Monrovia, before Buchanan itself fell into rebel hands in early August.