THE tribal faction at the centre of warfare in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, said yesterday it was ready for a truce if rival militias withdrew from city streets.
The ULIMO-J faction, in a statement in the name of its leader, General Roosevelt Johnson, and issued from its besieged barracks in Monrovia, called the ECOMOG African peacekeeping force to take control of the city immediately.
Earlier, the United States wound up the first stage of its military rescue mission in which helicopters have ferried more than 1,500 foreigners from Monrovia in over 50 sorties.
As Monrovia's urban warfare narrowed to around the army barracks at the centre of the violence, the evacuation switched to the sea, with a UN boat landing 300 people in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
A spokesman for ECOMOG, the 8,000 strong Nigerian led peacekeeping force, said units had taken control of the central commercial district around Broad Street. "ECOMOG is still pushing in, taking control of some of the areas," a spokesman, Mr Frank Akinola, said.
Negotiations were continuing to enable the force to cordon off the main army barracks where rebels were sheltering along with 25,000 refugees and scores of hostages.
A hotel owner in the posh Mamba Point embassy and residential district said ECOMOG road blocks had appeared there and looting had substantially subsided. "So far ECOMOG is on the streets but they are not really talking to any of the armed militiamen. They are just looking at them going by back and forth, he said. "We are hoping that things will be under control," added the proprietor, whose hotel is close to looted United Nations agencies whose workers have largely fled.
Gunfire echoed intermittently around the Barclay Training Centre barracks. Loyalists of the Krahn tribe faction leader, General Roosevelt Johnson, sheltered there say they have been constantly shelled by rival militias combined in a force backing the interim government.
A Liberian journalist trapped in the camp said by telephone that five rockets fell there yesterday. A day earlier he reported 10 deaths from shelling and others from cholera and diarrhoea, but there were no new casualty figures from rocket attacks.
Fighting erupted on April 6 when the coalition government tried to arrest Gen Johnson on murder charges. There have been no estimates of how many people have died but aid workers and fleeing residents have reported seeing bodies in the streets.
About 300 people fleeing Monrovia arrived by boat in neighbouring Sierra Leone as US helicopters brought in the last group of those taken out by air.
Most of those on the Hollgen, chartered by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), were Lebanese. Others were United Nations workers and staff of non governmental organisations. Passengers, including sick and exhausted women, shuffled out after the vessel docked in Freetown. A fishing boat landed 30 people on Saturday, mostly Liberians.