Relief workers return to rebel-held port of Harper

Relief workers who ventured into eastern Liberia to assess the conditions of civilians trapped behind rebel lines, said on Tuesday they planned to re-start operations in the port town of Harper near the border with Cote d'Ivoire. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said 15 relief workers who visited Harper on Saturday for the first time in six months, found the town had been heavily looted and deserted by most of its inhabitants. UNHCR said the estimated 700 people still living there were mostly males aged between 15 and 50. It did not specify whether or not they were fighters. The rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) controls the area. However, UNHCR said the situation in nearby Pleebo on the Ivorian border was better and life there seemed to have picked up again. The relief workers, who sailed to Harper on a UN ship from the capital Monrovia, said rebel commanders had assured them that MODEL would guarantee the safety of relief workers and ensure access to all areas under the movement's control. MODEL, which emerged on the scene in March, now controls all of southern and eastern Liberia from the Ivorian border up to the port city of Buchanan. Gilbert Bouic, director of the Danish Refugee Council said: "What is required now is a concerted effort to assist the people of Harper and surrounding counties. Schools, hospitals, clinics and even basic water pumps and wells must be rehabilitated." Relief agencies pulled out of eastern Liberia in March, when fighting between government troops and rebel forces began to heat up. Harper finally fell to MODEL in early May. UNHCR had three offices in the area and was assisting 38,000 Ivorian refugees, 45,000 Liberian returnees and 15,000 other West African nationals at the time it left. Many of them subsequently crossed into Cote d'Ivoire, where about 30,000 war victims of various nationalities are now congregated round the border town of Tabou. UNHCR said in a statement that its offices in Harper had been heavily looted. Even toilet bowls and door knobs had been taken. Pleebo Transit Centre, just to the north of Harper, was completely empty, there were 500 living in Harper transit centre and 2,700 in a third camp at Fish Town. However, UNHCR said Pleebo town, which lies on the Cavally River that forms the border with Cote d'Ivoire, was bustling with life and was full of women and children. "People were traveling in canoes back and forth across the river that marks the border with Côte d'Ivoire, importing food and other goods," it said. More exploratory missions by relief agencies to MODEL-controlled areas of Liberia are planned this week. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had sent a team to the port town of Greenville, half way between Harper and Buchanan. UNHCR meanwhile announced the dispatch of an inter-agency mission from Cote d'Ivoire to Zwedru, 150 km inland from Harper, and another from Monrovia to the northern town of Gbarnga. This is held by the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel movement. The ICRC visited Zwedru from Cote d'Ivoire a few weeks ago and has announced plans to open an office there. However, the situation in Buchanan, 120 km east of Monrovia, remains tense and unstable. MODEL fighters refused to let 550 soldiers of the ECOMIL West African peacekeeping force enter the town at the weekend and they were forced to establish a camp seven km outside it. Neil Joyce, who works in Buchanan for the British medical charity MERLIN told IRIN on Tuesday that drunk fighters still roamed the streets, firing in the air and stopping civilians at gun point. "ECOMIL (West African peacekeeping force) needs to move into Buchanan to provide security for the activities of the humanitarian organizations," he said. "Because of the security situation, relief agencies has not been able to distribute food to civilians trapped in Buchanan," Joyce said. Joyce said Merlin had been working with the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) to chlorinate wells in Buchanan to help control a cholera outbreak in Liberia's second largest city. "Because of this intervention, the number of cholera cases has stabilised," he said. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported recently that many wells in Buchanan had been polluted by the corpses of people killed in fighting which had been heaved inside them.