LIBERIA: Tens of thousands of terrified civilians fled through a battle zone in Monrovia yesterday as fresh clashes for Liberia's capital threatened to end the rule of its president, Mr Charles Taylor, writes James Astill in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Liberia's main rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), pushed through Monrovia's centre yesterday, towards the port.
The renewed fighting followed Mr Taylor's vow last week to remain in power, repudiating a peace agreement signed just days before.
As the battle moved towards the US embassy late yesterday, officials opened an adjacent embassy compound to about 40,000 refugees. At least 27 wounded civilians were brought to the office of the medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres late yesterday. Two of them later died.
With central Monrovia too dangerous to pass through and the city's northern suburbs cut off since late on Tuesday, Mr David Parker, the EU's aid co-ordinator in Liberia and one of the few remaining western aid workers or diplomats, suggested that the casualty toll would be much higher.
Mr Taylor, who was indicted earlier this month for war crimes committed during Sierra Leone's civil war, yesterday vowed to survive the second rebel attack in a fortnight on Monrovia. "I am right here with the men and women in arms, encouraging them to continue to fight on," he said on his private radio station yesterday.
"Your survival is my survival, my survival is your survival."
One of Mr Taylor's officers gave a more plausible account. "We will fight them until a neutral force can come here," he said. "We have no place to go."
According to last week's agreement, international observers were to monitor a ceasefire between the government, the LURD and another rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia, which are allegedly backed by Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast.
That agreement was in tatters yesterday with fighting never ceasing outside Monrovia and half the capital held by the LURD.
Liberia's last civil war, begun by Mr Taylor in 1989, ended when he was elected president in 1997. It was marked by more than a dozen failed peace deals and more than 200,000 dead.
This conflict began three years ago after the LURD was allegedly armed by Guinea to repel an invasion from Mr Taylor's allies in Sierra Leone. The Movement for Democracy in Liberia was launched earlier this year from Ivory Coast after Mr Taylor's fighters invaded its western part.