MONROVIA, July 29: President Charles Taylor’s forces fought back into Liberia’s second city on Tuesday, vowing to oust rebels whose capture of the strategic port marked a major setback for the embattled leader.
Residents in Buchanan said there had been heavy firing since Tuesday morning and that the town appeared to be split between Taylor’s forces and the rebels, known as Model, who still hold the port.
In the capital Monrovia, rebels struck back at the Stockton Creek bridge on the road skirting the centre towards the international airport. There were sporadic bursts of gunfire near two other key bridges into the heart of the city.
Rebels seized Buchanan, southeast of Monrovia, on Monday, leaving Taylor without a seaport to ship vital supplies of fuel and food. Rebels also hold Monrovia’s port, and are battling on a third front in the centre of the country.
“Right now we are fighting in central Buchanan. They are not making it easy, but our men are beating them back,” Defence Minister Daniel Chea told Reuters by satellite phone as bursts of gunfire resounded in the background.
The upsurge in fighting cast a cloud over plans to deploy West African peacekeepers to Monrovia where hundreds of thousands of desperate people are caught in the crossfire.
Food is running out in the capital, where people scurried through the potholed streets in search of what little nourishment there was, crouching low to avoid the bullets.
Gloved, masked aid workers wheeled an exhausted old man through the streets of the Mamba Point diplomatic quarter, where tens of thousands have pressed for shelter. He was suspected of having the cholera that many fear could spread.
Buchanan, a major timber port, is less than 100 km (60 miles) from the main international airport which is Taylor’s last major strategic card.
A Model representative at hamstrung peace talks in Ghana, General Boi Bleeju Boi, said he had no immediate information about an attack by Taylor’s forces on Buchanan.
REBEL SURGE: Rebels surged forward on several fronts on Monday, tightening the noose around Taylor, a former warlord who has been indicted for war crimes by an international court and who now controls barely one-third of his own country.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told the BBC his country was ready to send 1,500 peacekeepers to Liberia, but needed a commitment of outside help first.
A spokesman for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said on Tuesday it had sent a letter to the warring parties to urge them to observe an immediate ceasefire.
Sunny Ugoh said if a truce were in place, a reconnaissance team led by the commander of the peacekeeping force could go into Liberia within 48 hours.
Model’s Bleeju Boi said the ball was in Taylor’s court. “If Taylor’s men stop fighting, I will instruct my men to stop fighting,” he told Reuters by telephone from Ghana.
Liberians, whose country was founded by freed American slaves 150 years ago, have also urged the United States to intervene but so far the superpower has promised only logistical support for an African force.
The capture of Buchanan marked the reawakening of a smaller rebel group known as Model (Movement for Democracy in Liberia) and ratcheted up the pressure on Taylor, who has promised to step down when peacekeepers arrive.
The rebels fighting in Monrovia belong to the main rebel faction, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). Both groups want Taylor out as soon as possible.
HUNDREDS KILLED: The inch-by-inch battle for control of key bridges in Monrovia over the past 11 days has killed hundreds of civilians — caught by stray bullets or felled by hot shrapnel from mortar bombs lobbed haphazardly into the city centre.
The government says 1,000 civilians have been killed in the latest attack on the capital, battered by 14 years of violence.
Taylor’s troops and rebels also clashed in central Gbarnga, the former warlord’s stronghold during a civil war in the 1990s.
Three US warships are sailing towards Liberia, largely to support the West African force. The United States is viewed as a big brother by Liberians, but seen by the authorities as a covert ally of the rebels because of its military aid to Guinea — LURD’s main backer.
The State Department has sent its assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Walter Kansteiner, to the region. —Reuters