President Charles Taylor's forces fought to hold Liberia's capital against advancing rebels as thousands of terrified residents fled the battle zone through pounding rain and rising floodwaters.
Joining the people streaming out of the Atlantic Ocean beach community of Virginia, refugees Friday deserted camps around the capital already taken by the rebels, fearful of what the insurgents might bring.
PHOTO: AFP
"I have never seen good rebels," said James Siryon Cooper, rain streaming down his face as he clutched the hand of his 3-year-old son. "Rebels are rebels."
Liberia's main rebel movement recently has swept south toward the capital, Monrovia, pressing to take the city and drive out Taylor -- indicted this week on war crimes by an international tribunal in Sierra Leone for his involvement in a 10-year war there.
Fighting raged even as West African mediators said they had secured a promise from rebel delegates in Ghana to lay down their arms so peace talks could proceed.
"They have agreed to our concerns ... not to let the humanitarian situation get out of hand and they have promised to ask their colleagues back in Liberia to cease fire," said Mohammed Ibn Chambas, executive secretary of the regional bloc mediating the talks.
The government delegation also recommitted itself to the negotiations, he said.
Talks were scheduled to continue tomorrow. But there was no immediate sign of a cessation of hostilities.
On Friday, the US State Department ordered the evacuation of all non-emergency personnel from the US Embassy in Monrovia. The order comes less than two weeks after the US issued a travel advisory urging Americans to leave Liberia.
About 600 rebels attacked Virginia at dawn on Friday, and government forces were pushing them back from the suburb's Organization of African Unity bridge, Defense Minister Daniel Chea said.
At least five government soldiers and about 20 rebels were killed, Chea -- in military fatigues and bulletproof vest -- told reporters before jumping into a vehicle headed to the front. The figures could not be independently verified.
Civilians battling rising water to escape the area said they feared being caught behind rebel lines.
"We have every cause to run," cried Martha Wilson, 38, a baby strapped to her back and foam mattresses balanced on her head. "We don't know the rebels."
All seven of Monrovia's camps for internally displaced people are now under the control of insurgents, World Food Program spokesman Ramin Rafirasme said in Dakar, Senegal.
An exodus from the camps, which housed some 115,000 people within 10km of the capital, was gaining momentum on Friday, he said.
"People are fleeing in all directions. Loads of people. Thousands or tens of thousands. We can't quantify them," Rafirasme said. "The situation remains highly volatile."
The rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD, has battled since 1999 to oust Taylor, who was elected president in 1997, a year after a devastating seven-year civil war ended.
Taylor sparked Liberia's war in 1989 with a failed coup attempt and emerged from the conflict as the strongest warlord.
The war killed hundreds of thousands in Liberia, a nation founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.
Despite the latest fighting, Taylor's negotiators, LURD and a newly emerged insurgent group based in Liberia's southeast met with mediators on Friday in Ghana.
Taylor was in Ghana on Wednesday for the opening of the talks when the joint UN-Sierra Leone court unveiled its indictment accusing him of trafficking guns and diamonds with Sierra Leonean rebels, who killed, raped, kidnapped and maimed tens of thousands of civilians.
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