THE rusting cargo ship Bulk Challenge, with thousands of Liberian war refugees desperately seeking a country to accept them, was forced back to sea from the port of Takoradi yesterday after Ghanaian authorities refused to allow them to stay.
The Nigerian freighter left Takoradi port at 8.10 p.m. heading east in the direction of Nigeria. Aid workers said they heard the captain radio that he was heading for Lagos.
"The ship might go on to Nigeria and when they get there, you would see whether Nigeria would turn them back," said Brig Gen Gabriel Anyankpele, chief of staff of the Nigerian led Ecomog peacekeeping force in Liberia.
Ghanaian officials clarifying earlier accounts by port workers' said only some of the nearly 4,000 passengers had been briefly taken ashore including eight rushed to hospital.
Security officials fearing a stampede stopped the shore transfer and only the very ill were examined in quay side tents. Some 300 lucky passengers managed to end their ordeal by jumping onto a barge at Takoradi. They refused to reboard and were being fed on shore as the Bulk Challenge disappeared into the Atlantic night.
Ghanaian officials said they were likely to be transferred to a refugee camp for Liberians near the capital Accra.
State radio said another 200 refugees claiming to be Ghanaian were allowed off the boat along with two sick people. "They are now being screened," the radio added.
Ghana, saying it did not wish to encourage an exodus of refugees from Liberia, where a six year old civil war has flared again, insisted the freighter leave after passengers received provisions and medical care.
"Care must be taken in order not to create a panic situation in Monrovia which will unduly generate more exodus of Liberians into neighbouring countries which are already saddled with playing host to hundreds of thousands of Liberian refugees," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The ship, which set out from Monrovia on May 5th, was forced back to sea from the Ivory Coast port of San Pedro on Thursday after emergency repairs to leaks.
Three passengers are known to have died two said to have been shot by Nigerian peacekeeping troops on the freighter during an attempted mutiny. A woman died of internal bleeding.
There are 200 Nigerian soldiers of the Ecomog West African peacekeeping force stationed in Liberia on the ship.
The passengers on board the Nigerian registered freighter paid up to 875 (£48) each to get out of war shattered Monrovia, after renewed fighting in the six year civil war.
The overcrowded freighter has been refused entry at several west African ports which feared that armed fighters from Liberia's warring factions were among the genuine refugees.
In Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ms Sadako Ogata, said the UNHCR was ready to aid countries willing to shelter the refugees.
"It would be contrary to basic international commitments to keep these people in the current limbo," she said.
"While I understand the security concerns and preoccupations of the governments in the region, I ardently appeal to their compassion for these desperate people seeking refuge," Ms Ogata said.
"The situation has become desperate. Unless the door is opened to them, a lot of people, many of them women and children, may die," she added.
In Brussels, the European Commission proposed setting up a camp to cope with the refugees. The EU's humanitarian office, Echo, would finance the operation along with international humanitarian organisations and with the consent of neighbouring governments, a spokesman said.
"European public opinion, already wounded by the savage images of the fighting in Monrovia, cannot tolerate the international community re passive in the face of the Bulk Challenge tragedy," European Commissioner, Ms Emma Bonino, said. Members of Liberia's interim government urged boat people to return home as gunmen in the capital Monrovia shook hands and spoke of making peace.
"I think that the most important factor is that now we must do all that we can to bring back the kids to Liberia and not allow the ship to sink," said Information Minister Victoria Reffel.