Doe Troops Torch Liberia’s Capital in Last-Ditch Fight

Liberian soldiers of slain President Samuel K. Doe on Monday doused buildings in Monrovia with gasoline and set huge fires that burned out of control, reports from the Liberian capital said.

“No Doe, no Liberia! No president, no capital!” the soldiers chanted, according to British Broadcasting Corp. reports. The BBC said that the remnants of Doe’s army have decided to go down fighting and expect no mercy from the insurgents, who have been hunting them since Doe died in rebel captivity earlier this month.

Meanwhile, military sources in Lagos said that Nigerian jets had bombed strongholds of Liberian rebel leader Charles Taylor, a new indication that West African nations are becoming more involved in the fighting.

Over the weekend, warplanes from Ghana bombed Taylor’s camps in retaliation for shellings that killed five people on a Ghanaian ship and at the headquarters of the West African peacekeeping force in Monrovia.

In Sierra Leone, Herman Cohen, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, met with Gambian and Nigerian officials to discuss whether the American official should go to Monrovia on Wednesday. The State Department said that Cohen’s plans were not yet final.

Clouds of smoke hung over Liberia’s ravaged capital Monday, as the forces of Taylor and breakaway rebel leader Prince Johnson battled each other and the Doe loyalists with artillery and machine guns.

Nigeria, meanwhile, sent 650 troops to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where they waited Monday to board warships for Monrovia. They are to join the 1,000 Nigerians already there with the 3,000-member West African task force, which includes soldiers from Gambia, Ghana, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

With the Nigerian contingent are paratroopers who military sources said would be dropped into the port of Buchanan, southeast of Monrovia, and Kakata, north of the capital. Both cities are held by Taylor, who opposes the intervention and has taken about 2,000 West African citizens hostage.

Taylor’s rival, Johnson, has said he welcomes the West African task force and supports its call for installation of an interim government in Liberia, to be followed by elections.

Liberian refugees, interviewed in Sierra Leone on Monday, said that children were starving on the streets of Monrovia and a cholera epidemic was sweeping the city’s stranded population, Reuters news agency reported.

The Liberian capital has been cut off from the outside world since June, without running water, electricity or telephone communications. Little food has gotten through and many there are dying of starvation.

“I watched children and old people walking slowly along the roads around the embassy district and other parts of the city,” said one refugee who called himself Joseph. “They just walked, and then they would stop and sit or lie down. And then they wouldn’t be able to stand because they were too hungry, and they would begin to die.”

More than 500,000 Liberians have fled the country since Dec. 24, according to the Red Cross.

The civil war began when Taylor led a rebel invasion from Ivory Coast last December. President Doe was captured by members of Prince Johnson’s rebel faction and slain on Sept. 10.