MONROVIA, Oct 1: A gunfight broke out between rebels and loyalist forces in Liberia’s capital on Wednesday, leaving three civilians dead just hours after the United Nations took command of West African peacekeepers.

The worst violence in Monrovia since ex-president Charles Taylor left in August, potentially opening the way for an end to a long civil war, marred the debut of a force that is set to become the world’s biggest UN peacekeeping mission.

Liberians quickly blamed the peacekeepers for letting rebel leader Sekou Conneh bring armed bodyguards into the city on his first visit since a peace deal meant to end nearly 14 years of strife.

“The UN is responsible for this, they want us to die,” chanted crowds around the bodies of the three dead civilians as peacekeepers told gun-wielding rebels to clear the area.

Two of the victims had been shot. One was stabbed through the heart with a bayonet.

The trouble began with people throwing stones at Conneh’s motorcade as it drove through the Paynesville suburb to meet caretaker President Moses Blah. Shots were then fired — it was not clear from which side — triggering a 20-minute gunbattle.

Conneh’s car sped away and rebels said he returned to the stronghold of Tubmanburg, 60 kms north of Monrovia, without meeting Blah.

“I am very disappointed, I feel terrible,” said Edwin Snowe, a government mediator who organised the meeting. “It was my hope that the UN forces would have taken over the security.”

A UN spokeswoman said she could not comment immediately.

At full strength the force will have 15,000 troops, 1,115 police, 250 military observers and 160 staff officers, making it the largest UN deployment since one that helped bring an end early last year to a related war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

West African nations have already sent 3,500 troops to Liberia, which has been given fresh hope by the peace deal signed between rebels and the government in August after Taylor flew into exile.

At a ceremony later on Wednesday, West African soldiers of the Ecomil mission were to swap their hats for UN blue berets to mark the transfer between the two forces in what the UN called “a symbolic rehatting”.

The UN hopes the UNMIL force in Liberia will replicate the success of the peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, which disarmed 47,000 rebel and government fighters and helped draw a line under that country’s decade-long war.

On Tuesday, it appointed Kenya’s Daniel Opande, who headed UNAMSIL, as commander of the Liberia force, which is expected to reach full strength in four to six months.

The Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Namibia and Ethiopia have all offered troops. Ireland has offered a headquarters company and Russia may send 1,200 soldiers.

“The job is not going to be easy...but I am confident that with the support of the international community and the people of Africa we will accomplish peace in Liberia,” Opande told reporters in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown.

Liberia’s strife began when Taylor launched a seven-year civil war in 1989 in which 200,000 people died.

He was elected president in 1997 but his old foes soon took up arms again and now hold over three quarters of the country, originally founded by freed American slaves in 1847.—Reuters