Hundreds of civilians began flooding across two battle-scarred bridges that divide the government-held city centre of Monrovia from the rebel-held port as the guns fell silent on Tuesday following the arrival of Nigerian peacekeeping troops. Tension relaxed after more than two weeks of heavy fighting between government and rebel forces for the control of the seaside city of more than one million people. Fighters loyal to President Charles Taylor tried at first to prevent the crowd of civilians from crossing the bridges that span the Mesurado River by firing into the air. But eventually, the crowd, chanting "We want peace! We want peace!" were let through to visit their abandoned homes and search for lost relatives. An IRIN correspondent who accompanied the human tide across the frontline saw bodies lying in the streets and dozens of abandoned bullet-ridden vehicles in streets carpeted with emptry cartridges on the rebel side of the city. "The bullet shells were so thick on the ground, it was like gravel," he said.
| The number of rounds expended per casualty is probably incredible. Real soldiers don't fire from the hip, nor (usually) poke their gun barrels over the tops of walls and fire in the general direction of their opponents. |
A plume of smoke rose from a residential area set alight by government artillery shells in fighting on Monday. People appeared well fed because the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Development (LURD) rebel movement had broken open warehouses in the port and had distributed food stocks held there to the local population. In contrast, food remained scarce in government-held areas of Monrovia, where the price of rice has soared five-fold in recent weeks and many people have not eaten a proper meal for days. A senior LURD commander appealed to the United Nations to send representatives into the rebel-held sector of the city to discuss the distribution of food stocks still remaining in the port warehouses and the use of the Freeport to bring in more relief supplies. Alhaji Sekou Fofana, LURD's deputy secretary general for civil affairs, told IRIN he only wanted to negotiate with the UN, because he did not fully trust some of the non-governmental relief agencies operating in areas of the city held by forces loyal to President Charles Taylor. He did not name them.
| Doesn't want to restart the old Food for Nookie program, huh? |
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