Word: monrovia
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Relief workers stationed in Liberia are accustomed to their share of danger, but last week even they had seen enough. As the capital, Monrovia, was engulfed in the worst round of terror in six years, relief workers huddled around two-way radios waiting for news of an evacuation. During lulls in the shooting, those who could made their way to the U.S. embassy. On Tuesday the first U.S. MH-53 helicopter finally appeared over the horizon. "Soldiers threatened to rape our children," said Brian Johnson of World Relief after touching down in neighboring Sierra Leone. "I feel very good...
Liberia's latest spasm of fighting began earlier this month. Leaders of the country's two main warring factions--who, following a peace agreement last August, had formed a new ruling council in Monrovia--announced their intention to arrest one of their own council members, Roosevelt Johnson. His followers responded by spilling into the streets, blowing up two helicopters recently donated by the U.S. and seizing hundreds of hostages, including, reportedly, at least 20 peacekeepers. Holed up in an old military base, they exchanged fire with opposing militiamen...
With that, Monrovia descended into anarchy. Militiamen and free-lance thieves, many of them children, rampaged through the streets, shooting their way into abandoned stores and looting at will. Those who resisted were killed. Bloated bodies lay rotting on empty avenues...
...MONROVIA, Liberia: More than 60,000 people wandered the streets of Liberia's capital hungry and homeless on Sunday as the two-day cease-fire between government and rebel forces wavered and aid workers evacuated the seaside capital. Civilians scrambled for food and shelter as government soldiers continued shelling rebel army barracks and sporadic arms fire erupted downtown. The latest fighting, which threatens to unravel a tenous peace reached last year, points up the very deep fault lines in the country, says TIME's Andrew Purvis: "There are few recognized authorities. Militia men will steal your car, they will shoot...
Liberia's armed guerrilla leaders have driven the nominally democratic West African country into the ground with six years of civil war, and so mercilessly that half the population fled. Today, hundreds of thousands of cheering but exhausted civilians lined the streets of Monrovia as several of the chief warlords re-entered the capital for the first time in years. In an elaborate ceremony attended by foreign diplomats, the warlords were seated on a new six-member Council of State. Andrew Purvis, Nairobi bureau chief, reports that they have reason to believe that the ceasefire -- the war's thirteenth -- will...