Muslim-Christian violence engulfed Liberia's war-battered capital Friday, with machete-wielding mobs rampaging through the streets and UN peacekeepers firing warning shots and tear gas to restore order.
Interim head of state Gyude Bryant ordered a round-the-clock curfew in Monrovia, where the bodies of the dead and wounded lay bleeding near torched churches and mosques.
By dusk, at the end of a day that marked some of the worst violence in the capital since the end of a rebel war last year, the crumbling seaside city was largely quiet apart from the rattle of sporadic gunfire. It was unclear how many people were killed and injured, but some residents put the death toll at five.
"I don't know what is going to happen to us tonight -- only God will save us," said Pastor Benjamin Hajan, whose church was burned down early Friday.
Bryant, speaking on radio on Friday, promised Liberians: "We will use all the forces at our disposal to protect the peace-loving people and residents of this country."
The UN special envoy to Liberia, Jacques Klein, said he gave peacekeepers orders to "react with maximum force, and this means shoot to kill."
Klein said UN troops and Liberian police had detained 168 people, and peacekeepers had been ordered to patrol through the night to enforce the curfew.
Troubles began overnight in the Paynesville district of eastern Monrovia, where at least three churches, two mosques and several homes were set ablaze, witnesses said.
On Friday, mobs of Christians and Muslims, mostly young men carrying sticks, knives, machetes and Kalashnikov rifles, took to the streets. The UN police commander in Liberia, Mark Kroeker, said UN troops rescued several people from angry mobs.
A police officer said one UN armored personnel carrier trying to disperse a crowd inadvertently crushed and killed three people who had been knocked down as they tried to flee. An Associated Press photographer saw three mangled bodies near a market where the incident was said to have occurred.
UN officials could not be reached for comment.
It was unclear what sparked the mayhem. Religious violence is rare in Liberia, a tiny nation in West Africa founded in the 1800s by freed American slaves where about 40 percent of the country's 3.3 million people are Christian and 20 percent are Muslim.
A nationwide program to disarm ex-combatants is to end today. Bryant said the government believed the violence was organized by "evil forces who do not want to see an end to the disarmament and the success of the peace process."
Small skirmishes spread to other parts of Monrovia as well, including a port and some districts outside the capital. In Kakata, 55km north, two mosques reportedly were destroyed.
In Paynesville, one man -- apparently unconscious after being stabbed in the head -- could be seen lying on a main road in a pool of blood. Another was bludgeoned in the face and a third, shot in the leg, was carried to safety by two friends.
"What I want from Liberians -- both Muslims and Christians -- is to stop this thing," begged Ibrahim Soto, a 23-year-old Muslim student who said Christian attackers burned down his mosque.
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