- Civilians fleeing by the thousands appealed yesterday
for rescue, as a first trip into the countryside showed Liberia's nightmare
was far from over with families clutching bone-thin babies speaking of
nightly gunfire and barrages despite a week-old peace deal.
-
- Exhausted refugees streamed south, or crowded by the
thousands into dirt yards, schools and churches in and around the last
government-held town, Zensu, on a road linking the rebel-held north to
Monrovia.
-
- With a still-building West African peace force yet to
venture into the interior, families ran out, screaming for help, at the
sight of some of the first civilian vehicles from the south.
-
- "We're suffering. Our children are dying,"
shouted Fatu Leonfay, 42. "We're dropping them on the road."
-
- Ms Leonfay, and others, pleaded for peacekeepers. "If
they don't come, we'll die," she cried.
-
- A nearly month-old West African peace mission has calmed
Monrovia, where rebels lifted 2 1/2 months of siege after forcing out warlord-turned-president
Charles Taylor on August 11. Reports of fighting persist in the north-east,
south-east and centre.
-
- Almost all of it is thought small-scale, with militias
or individual fighters scrambling to get last bits of territory and spoils
ahead of the peacekeepers' push into the interior.
-
- "There's no actual peace yet," said refugee
Suanie Bestman, 27, emerging from hiding in the bush. "Only in Monrovia
are people living a peaceful life."
-
- Aid workers in Kakata, a few miles closer to the capital,
tended for the columns of people on the move.
-
- "We are in a mess," Red Cross worker Joroline
Edwards said, calling on West African peace forces to intervene.
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- © Irish Examiner, 2003, Thomas Crosbie Media, TCH
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- http://www.examiner.ie/pport/web/ireland/Full_Story/did-sgATjhtl4R8CUsgHuTLc4nqWo2.asp
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