Rebel Forces Return to Liberian Capital

Rebels battling to oust President Charles Taylor entered the capital Saturday, pushing tens of thousands of civilians and retreating soldiers farther downtown.

Exploding rockets continued into the night after a day of heavy machine gun and mortar fire. Rebels crossed the St. Paul Bridge that marks the boundary of the city, putting them within three miles of the city center.

Dressed in full combat gear, Taylor took to the streets of Monrovia and called on his troops to fight until the last man. He vowed to stick with his soldiers to the bitter end.

“I say to you, my people, I will be here with you,” Taylor said. “I will stay here with you. I will go no place until I am convinced that the international forces are here and in sufficient quantities [so] that I can no longer worry how many of you will die or how many of you can expect to be blown away by some bomb.

“I am with you to the end,” the president continued. “This is my country. I live with you and I die with this.”

Rebel leaders attending peace talks in the nearby Ghanaian capital of Accra denied that they had plans to seize Monrovia and accused Taylor’s troops of provoking a fight.

“The government has sent people out to harass our people and attack us,” said Gen. Joe Wylie, a senior military advisor for the rebel movement known as Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy. He spoke by phone from Ghana. “We are not going to attack Monrovia,” he said, even as rebels troops were advancing.

Civilians were not prepared to take any chances. As dawn broke Saturday, thousands straggled into town from Monrovia’s far-flung northwestern suburbs: men and boys with sacks of clothes and mattresses balanced atop their heads; women, babies strapped to their backs, toting plastic buckets stuffed with meager bundles of their belongings.

“We just heard launching sounds, firing sounds,” said Bernice Brown, 23, a large blue travel bag perched upon her head and her 3-year-old daughter, Maima, tied to her back with cloth. “I took whatever I could and left.”

The young mother said she intended to take refuge in a school building or other public institution, like thousands of others who have sought shelter. She hadn’t seen her husband since the last time the rebels advanced on the city in June, and their family was forced to flee their home near the St. Paul Bridge. “I’m afraid,” Brown said. “I don’t have anybody but me.”

With the country already struggling to care for more than 100,000 refugees, Saturday’s outpouring made a grave situation worse. Some families had walked for almost two hours to escape the gunfire and explosions near their homes. Many said they would seek protection in the homes of relatives, while others made their way to the vicinity of the fortified U.S. Embassy compound, where a rocket exploded last month killing 21 people.

“We would have loved to have stayed at home, but everyone in our community was leaving,” said Momo Tunkarah, 18, who abandoned his home in a bustling Monrovia suburb after the sounds of explosions began to get closer.

Bands of government militia boys, rifles and grenade launchers slung over their shoulders, swaggered down the street against the human tide. Some started to erect makeshift roadblocks of tires, stones and wooden planks. Others gathered in rowdy clusters along the roadside. By noon, most of the suburban sidewalks had emptied.

Other government fighters, many of them teenagers smoking marijuana and donning women’s wigs, piled into pickup trucks that raced out of the city toward the front.

Liberian Gen. Timothy “Get Out” Massaquor, 26, said that for now his soldiers were “on the defensive.” The rebels “are attacking,” said Massaquor, who has been a combatant for the past 10 years. “We will reply.”

It was the third time in the past two months that rebels had entered the capital. Twice before, international pressure had forced them out, averting what local and foreign military strategists predicted would have been even worse violence.

The attack also raised questions about the likelihood of an international peacekeeping force.

Washington is considering a limited deployment of U.S. troops to Liberia, to help bring peace to a nation settled by freed American slaves. But the White House insists that such a move would depend on Taylor stepping down and leaving this country, where 14 years of intermittent war have killed and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Taylor has accepted an offer to live in Nigeria, but says he will leave Liberia only when peacekeepers arrive, a decision the rebels oppose.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Saturday that the U.S. would continue to evaluate the developments in Liberia. “The discussions are continuing,” he said in a statement. “And the president is continuing to assess the situation.”

Late Friday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States was “deeply concerned” about the escalation of violence and cautioned that “all parties to the Liberian conflict must understand that the international community will not accept any attempt to preempt the negotiations through the resumption of fighting, and those responsible will be held accountable.”

He said the peace negotiations now underway represented the “only way forward” for the country.

An American assessment team in Liberia canceled its activities Saturday “due to combatant action.” The U.S. Embassy urged its citizens to go to its compound where they would be provided refuge.

A rumor that a team of officials from the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, had arrived at Monrovia’s port sent thousands of residents around the Duala commercial district into a frenzy. Waving branches and chanting, “We want peace, no more war,” the throng surged forward into the direction of the fighting.

“We heard [peacekeepers] had arrived, so we are happy,” said Josephine Walo, 26. “We are tired of looting. We are tired of war. We are tired of being refugees and displaced from our homes.”

Defense Minister Daniel Chea urged the revelers to retreat, explaining that the ECOWAS team had been delayed. ECOWAS has said that it will send peacekeeping troops to Liberia.

As the rebel advance on the capital progressed, staff members at the city’s John F. Kennedy Hospital braced for the worst. A second triage area, consisting of 15 beds and several stretchers, was recently established within the compound. Doctors and nurses were put on full alert.

“We don’t pray for any escalation of the crisis,” said hospital administrator Weimie-Dehtho Mhenduah. “But we know that there could be an escalation, so we are always prepared.”

Over the past two days, doctors here say about a dozen injured have been brought to the hospital, most of them with gunshot wounds.

While the population clambers for some kind of international intervention, peace negotiators in Accra are working to reach a deal on a transitional government. A draft proposal, presented Friday, would ban government and rebel leaders from holding high office in a transitional government, create a truth commission and develop a military from among rebel groups and government forces.

Wylie, the rebel general, said his group was still reviewing the document. But many here believe the rebels are no longer willing to settle their grievances at the negotiation table.

“They are getting impatient, because they weren’t given any [top] seats,” said Col. Anthony Sherman, an intelligence officer with the Liberian government. “If the international community doesn’t come in soon, they will destroy the country. They will destroy life and property.”

Staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.