15,000 Flee to U.S. Compound Amid Liberian Fighting

Shelling and gunfire raged in the Liberian capital Monday, sending U.N. observers and at least 15,000 others fleeing to a U.S. Embassy compound. The Clinton administration was considering evacuating nearly 500 Americans as early as today.

The fighting between government troops and rebel factions that broke out Saturday in Monrovia is the worst in three years.

“We hear rocket-propelled grenade fire, mortar fire, heavy-arms fire,” Dudley Sims, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, said by telephone. “It’s pretty bad.”

The six-year conflict among seven rebel factions, fighting mainly along ethnic lines, has killed more than 150,000 people and left at least half the country’s 2.3 million residents homeless.

A peace accord in August was supposed to clear the way for elections this year, but renewed unrest in the West African country--founded in 1847 by freed American slaves--has caused the collapse of civil order.

U.S. officials in Washington said the latest fighting was taking place around the Barclay Training Center, an army barracks in downtown Monrovia where about 30 African peacekeepers were being held hostage. Three of their armored personnel carriers were reported captured by rebels. About 12,000 African peacekeepers have been unable to stem Liberia’s fighting.

Paul Koulen, deputy representative of the U.N. Development Program in Monrovia, said the country’s only international airport is in ruins. He said three U.S.-donated helicopters and a passenger airplane of Weasua Airlines, which flies in West Africa, were destroyed.

Koulen, speaking from his office in the seaside diplomatic district of Mamba Point, said people were fleeing in all directions.

“We’ve seen these people with all their belongings on their heads--beds, sheets, everything--running up and down Mamba Point, depending on where the gunfire is coming from,” he said.

There was no official word on casualties, but Koulen and other witnesses said they saw many bodies in the streets. U.S. officials said there were no reports of American casualties.

Sims said a U.S. military team was prepared to head to Liberia to evacuate about 470 Americans. State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said U.S. military planes were flown to neighboring Sierra Leone and that a team could be in Liberia by today to order an American evacuation.

Most of the Americans in Monrovia are missionaries, workers with nongovernmental organizations or business people. There are 38 U.S. Embassy employees.

Davies said 15,000 Liberians were being given refuge at the 27-acre residential compound of Americans working at the U.S. Embassy.