UN sending aid to displaced civilians in Saclepea

The United Nations plans to send an aid convoy carrying food, blankets and other relief items to Nimba County in north-central Liberia on Thursday to help more than 10,000 people have been displaced from their homes by recent fighting, Abou Moussa, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Liberia, said. Moussa said the decision to send the truck convoy to Saclepea, where most of the displaced have congregated, followed a visit to the town by a UN assessment mission on Monday. The UN team found that at least 10,000 civilians had sought refuge in Saclepea to escape recent skirmishes between fighters loyal to ex-president Charles Taylor and rebels of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) to the south of the town. "The situation in Saclepea is fresher those we have seen so far - you have no room, no food, nothing whatsoever. We need to respond to this one," Moussa told a news conference on Tuesday. Fighting flared up in Nimba County at the end of October, but died down on 4 November after General Daniel Opande, the head of UN peacekeeping forces in Liberia, visited the area with Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea and a senior MODEL commander. Saclepea, a once bustling market town of 15,000, has remained largely unscathed by 14 years of civil war which have laid waste to most other towns in Nimba County. But Moussa said the humanitarian situation in the town was "disastrous". The displaced people, he said, were living rough with no food, no medicine and no shelter. Justin Bagarishya, the head of the World Food Programme Liberia, said the UN truck convoy to Saclepea would carry 250 MT of food. "We are planning to send in food rations for a month...If you send it a lot of food, it may attract people who may try to seize it illegally. At the same time if you arranged to deliver a small quantity, you would have to organise several convoys," Bagarishya said. "We are trying to balance what would be the most appropriate scale," he added. Bagirishya said arrangements were being made to secure safe passage for the convoy through the towns of Gbarnga and Ganta. Liberia's main rebel group, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) controls Gbarnga, 150 km north of Monrovia, while Ganta, 50 km further north, is controlled by Taylor loyalists. Taylor stepped down and went into exile on 11 August. A week later, the rump of his government signed a peace agreement with LURD and MODEL. That paved the way for a broad-based transitional government led by Gyude Bryant to take power on 14 October.