Liberia's warring factions were due to start peace talks yesterday but rebels kept up the pressure on President Charles Taylor with an offensive on the doorsteps of the capital Monrovia and an ultimatum for him to step down.
Rebels struck into the northern outskirts of the frightened coastal city for the third day running on Sunday, sending tens of thousands fleeing under pouring rain for whatever refuge they could find.
By the evening, government officials said they had driven the rebels back.
The rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), who got within 6km of the city center on Saturday, said it was holding back under foreign pressure to give the peace talks a chance and avoid a bloodbath.
In Monrovia, thousands of people fleeing the fighting huddled outside the city's main stadium, after wandering in the streets for days in search of a shelter. Foreigners were told to gather at embassy compounds if they wanted to leave.
Memories are still sharp of the bloody tribal warfare that left Monrovia's streets littered with bodies in the 1990s and some residents appealed to the international community to intervene quickly to stop the mayhem.
"We are not interested in how much food, or how many blankets or buckets we can get. Our great challenge is peace," said Isaac Levi Flomo, a town hall official at the stadium.
Despite the ongoing violence, mediators in Ghana said they were confident peace talks would start in earnest yesterday after Liberia's newest rebel faction Model showed up to join LURD and a government delegation at the negotiating table.
"Whatever happens, we will stay here because even if LURD takes over, you need negotiations. We need a [peace] process, an ongoing process," said a West African diplomat close to the talks.
But the rebels set the clock ticking for Taylor, giving him a 72-hour ultimatum to step down on Sunday or face the consequences.
"We think the point is made that militarily Taylor has failed," J. Laveli Supuwood, a senior LURD member, said.
The two rebel factions control around two-thirds of the country of 3 million. Facing them is a president who last week was indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed court, had his vice-president arrested after an alleged coup plot and has been told by the US to step down.
Taylor has few friends within the international community. He has long been seen as the mastermind behind more than a decade of intertwined conflicts in West Africa and is accused of exporting Liberia's own strife into neighboring Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast.
But regional diplomats says he is likely to fight to the very end and worry about the prospect of a three-way battle for Monrovia among forces split on tribal lines and hungry for power. Fleeing civilians say the rebels are as brutal as Taylor's militias.
"If he goes just like that, the population will suffer," said the West African diplomat.
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