Shelling, gun fire hits Liberian capital
( 2003-06-25 10:53) (Agencies)
Shells pounded Liberia's capital Tuesday and explosions and machine-gun fire echoed in what President Charles Taylor's forces said was a renewed rebel drive into Monrovia.
Fighting came despite a week-old cease-fire in Liberia's insurgency, which in the past month increasingly has seen the seige tighten on the capital of 1 million, now filled to bursting with refugees from fighting elsewhere in the West African nation.
Defense officials said insurgents had crossed the St. Paul's river bridge into the western outskirts of the city.
Fighting sent families rushing to the center of town for safety, streaming into neighborhoods where schools, stadiums and other buildings already were packed with refugees.
Deputy Defense Minister Austin Clark said shells had landed in a western neighborhood just outside the heart of Monrovia. Clark claimed the artillery had hit groups of fleeing civilians.
"People were torn to pieces," Clark said.
Women and children were still fleeing as night fell, mattresses on their heads and babies at the back, under a steady drizzle.
"We will continue to run and run — no end to our running," said one woman, fleeing Monrovia's outskirts earlier in the day as fighting neared the capital.
Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century, has seen increasing pushes by West African leaders, the United Nations, United States and European Union to calm fighting.
The U.S. State Department expressed concern over the renewed fighting.
"The United States condemns all violations of the cease-fire and calls upon all combatants to stop fighting immediately," said spokesman Richard Boucher. "The United States regrets that no armed party has met fully its obligations" to help implement the truce.
In Ghana, where rebels and representatives of Taylor's party and others have gathered for peace talks, rebels insisted their troops were only responding to new attacks by government forces.
"I wish to say categorically that in the face of these unprovoked attacks, we have advised our forces on the ground to use military discretion, and that is exactly what they're doing," said Kabineh Ja'Neh, leader of Liberians United delegation in Ghana.
Rebels and government officials alike on Tuesday accused each other of days of violations of the cease-fire, the first in Liberia's fast-escalating three-year rebel drive to topple Taylor.
"Minor cease-fire violations are expected. But that does not mean one should launch a full-scale war on a populated town like Monrovia," Defense Minister Daniel Chea said.
The rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy announced Monday that it was pulling out of the peace talks being held in the fellow West African nation.
Rebels accused West African mediators of not holding Taylor to his pledge to cede power as part of the June 17 cease-fire accord. The accord called for talks leading to a transition government, without Taylor.
Despite the pledge, Taylor announced Friday he would stay on until the January end of his term, and yield power then only to a government headed by his vice president, Moses Blah.
In three years, rebels have gained at least 60 percent of the country and are pushing to take Monrovia and drive out Taylor.
Both sides also reported fighting since Sunday at Klay, 20 miles northwest of Monrovia, and at the northern city of Ganta on the Guinea border.
Taylor won Liberia's presidency at the end of the country's devastating 1989-1996 civil war, which Taylor had launched, leading a small force into Liberia to topple the then-government.
A U.N.-backed war-crimes court indicted Taylor earlier this month after prosecutors accused him of a 10-year terror campaign in neighboring Sierra Leone.
The U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions on Taylor and his regime for gunrunning, diamond-trafficking and other dealings with militias in Sierra Leone and elsewhere in West Africa.
|
