Packed Church Hit by Shells in Liberia

Mortar shells slammed into a Monrovia church packed with hundreds of terrified refugees and hit the surrounding area on Saturday, killing seven people and wounding dozens more.

Pastor Michael Chea said three people were killed at the Greater Refuge Temple compound as rebels continued their fight to topple President Charles Taylor, who later renewed a pledge to step down once international peacekeepers arrive. Fighters said four other people were killed in the area.

“Seven rockets landed here, and one dropped in the compound.... We are only living here by the mercy of God,” Chea said.

Hours after the shelling, two sheet-covered bodies still lay outside the church.

Victoria Sumpong had placed her baby on the floor next to her moments before a mortar shell crashed through the roof in the center of the sanctuary, killing her -- but sparing her child only a few inches away.

Massa Vincent cried over the body of another victim, her grandfather Zinna, 74.

Inside the church, under the hole in the roof, the carpet was red and the blood barely showed.

“Help us! We’re dying. We don’t have anywhere to go,” one refugee pleaded.

Residents and aid workers said at least 30 seriously wounded civilians had been taken from the church compound to the main hospital in Monrovia, the capital. The pastor said the total number injured was about 55.

Witnesses said the mortar shells appeared to come from rebel-held areas, but the insurgents denied aiming at civilian targets.

The fighting raged despite a cease-fire declared by the rebels on Friday shortly after President Bush announced that U.S. troops were on their way to assist peacekeepers.

“Right now they are there to be positioned off the coast of Liberia so that we can help [West African peacekeepers] get in there. And that’s where it stands,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Saturday. The date of any peacekeeping deployment has not yet been announced by West African leaders.

Bush on Friday reiterated a demand that Taylor, indicted for war crimes by a U.N.-backed court, leave Liberia.

Taylor, addressing a prayer meeting Saturday at a Monrovia stadium, said he would hand power to his vice president or the House speaker when peacekeepers have arrived.

In his first comments since Bush’s deployment order, Taylor said, “The presence of peacekeepers in this country is extremely necessary to redeem us and save our people. After they come, we will receive them, and I will turn over my office.

“I hope they can come sooner and not later.”

Taylor said that more than 1,000 people had died in eight days of attacks by rebels trying to topple him and that “if I were not here, there would be bodies all over the city.”

“Everybody is already fasting, because there is no food,” said Boaki Kiate, who has lived for two months in the squalid stadium, where refugees have been sleeping on the concrete floors of old locker rooms and corridors.

Ragged refugees largely ignored the finely dressed, 5,000-strong crowd gathered in the bleachers to hear Taylor. He apologized for the suffering of refugees at the stadium but took no responsibility for it.