LIBERIA: Forces loyal to Liberia's President Charles Taylor battled rebels for the sixth day in the capital Monrovia yesterday, as west African countries inched closer to deploying peacekeepers and residents begged for help.
But hopes that regional troops would be sent in immediately to stop the carnage were dampened, as a meeting of regional and US military experts in Sierra Leone to work out the details of the mission ended with no date for the deployment.
Desperate and destitute, Monrovians want African troops to shield them from more chaos in the city, where heavy gunfire echoed overnight at two key bridges and fighting raged on a road which cuts around the back of the coastal capital.
"We are trying to get the guys to leave town and respect the ceasefire, but they just haven't done that so we are defending our positions," said Defence Minister Mr Daniel Chea, referring to a June truce repeatedly violated by all sides.
This is the third time rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) have attacked the capital since June.
Fighting has reportedly killed up to 1,000 people.
Nigerian peacekeepers are on standby to intervene by moving from nearby Sierra Leone to Monrovia, but the final go-ahead has not yet been given.
"We want Nigeria to come and come now, they are our biggest brothers, let them save us from the shelling and bullets, as they did before," said John Sarkoe, a carpenter at the city stadium where up to 50,000 people are huddling for safety.
Nigerian and Ghanaian troops were deployed in Monrovia in the 1990s during a previous round of civil war that killed 200,000 people, and while they failed to halt all violence, residents credit them with preventing worse bloodshed.
Some people took advantage of the relative quiet on President Taylor's side yesterday to stock up on staples, such as rice, but there was no stop to the steady flow of bundle-bearing refugees, shuffling away from the latest battle ground.
Aid workers carried eight bodies to a beachside burial ground overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, where more than 80 corpses have been interred since the latest fighting began.
The salty foam washed off the blood that had seeped onto the stretchers but the breeze could not overpower the reek of death.
Liberians are unhappy with the slow pace at which the region is helping, but even more with the United States, historically tied to the country founded by freed American slaves in 1847.
Officials from the United States, United Nations, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Nigeria met in neighbouring Sierra Leone yesterday to fine-tune plans to deploy a vanguard force of some 1,300 Nigerian peacekeepers.
Nigeria's army chief of staff Gen Martin Luther Agwai said after the meeting that international partners had offered logistic and financial support to the force but no date had been set for the deployment and another meeting would be held in Ghana on Monday.
"We do not want to rush into Liberia without proper planning," Gen Agwai told reporters, adding that it was up to ECOWAS politicians to decide whether the force should go in while fighting continued.
Regional officials have insisted that a ceasefire must be in place before peacekeepers can deploy.
President Bush is considering sending troops, but is wary of foreign commitments in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Washington also remembers a bloody retreat from Somalia a decade ago.
The Pentagon said yesterday that a group of three US ships carrying 2,300 troops had entered the Mediterranean for possible duty in a Liberia operation.
The Defence Minister said the Liberian government would do what it could to ensure there were no obstacles to the peacekeepers' arrival.
"They are coming in our interest so I don't see why we should delay their arrival," he said. "The Liberian people are desperate." - (Reuters)