looks like a job for mr pulitzer prize..., aka, hitlery's husband
Posted on 06/27/2003 7:21:12 PM PDT by Pikamax
Hundreds killed in Monrovia chaos
James Astill in Freetown Saturday June 28, 2003 The Guardian
Heavy artillery and small-arms fire pounded Monrovia yesterday as a four-day battle for the city degenerated into scenes of random violence and widespread looting by the army of Liberia's besieged president and indicted war criminal, Charles Taylor. As the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) redoubled its attack on the city's main port, residents estimated that 500 civilians had been killed in that small area of Monrovia alone.
Mr Taylor's army, a ragged assortment of Israeli-trained officers and hastily-armed street-boys, rushed to meet the rebels' advance, before switching its efforts to retaking Monrovia's main brewery in the nearby suburb of Doala.
"We are fighting to liberate Doala in general, the beer factory in particular," said one soldier running to the front with a submachine gun.
At midday, the rebels unilaterally declared a ceasefire to "avoid a grotesque humanitarian catastrophe," according to a statement posted on the internet. Yet aid workers and local journalists in Monrovia reported no let-up in the fighting around the port, or in looting across the city.
"There's heavy fighting for the port and loads of guys just shooting into the air and looting everywhere," said David Parker, the EU's aid coordinator by telephone from the city.
After a stray rocket hit a funeral home, Mr Taylor's soldiers poured in to loot among the tangled corpses. Around the port, journalists reported seeing dozens of residents dragging the bodies of family-members to bury in the sand or dump in the surf.
With most of Monrovia's food reserves stored inside the port, food prices tripled overnight, leaving the majority of the city's 1.2 million people hungry and prone to worsening epidemics. Health workers have reported many cholera cases among about 100,000 people seeking refuge at the main football stadium.
Most of Monrovia's population were refugees even before the current battle, having been chased from their villages in northern Liberia and neighbouring Sierra Leone during a decade of bitter conflict in the region.
Up to 100 foreign aid workers were trapped in the American embassy in Monrovia as a planned evacuation was stalled by UN red tape.
"While the UN pisses about looking for safe-passage guarantees from every side, we're having to work out how to save ourselves," said one of the trapped aid workers.
Four UN helicopters were awaiting permission to fly from Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, despite a blinding tropical storm throughout the day. A UN spokesman, Patrick Coker, said: "We're just awaiting clearance. We remain on very short notice to move in."
The battle for Monrovia had waned late on Thursday as both the rebels and government forces withdrew pending a statement by President George Bush, who is due to visit Africa next month.
Yet with Mr Bush merely restating that Mr Taylor should cede power to a transitional government, the fighting quickly resumed.
Washington has come under mounting pressure to intervene in Liberia, as Britain did in Sierra Leone and France has in Ivory Coast.
On Wednesday, Britain's ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, urged America to lead a multinational force into Monrovia.
"America is being told to act by the international community, and so it must," said Comfort Iro of the International Crisis Group, a thinktank in Freetown. "Liberia is its sphere of influence, and the situation there is critical."
..."America is being told to act by the international community, and so it must... Liberia is its sphere of influence, and the situation there is critical."
Is the UN proposing that we colonize Africa?
Four UN helicopters were awaiting permission to fly from Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, despite a blinding tropical storm throughout the day. A UN spokesman, Patrick Coker, said: "We're just awaiting clearance. We remain on very short notice to move in."
The UN is the model for a "World Government" that so many people seem to want. And yet, I am hard-pressed to come up with an example of UN success stories, either on the micro level, as here, or globally.
Yet they managed to develop proposals for taxation and gun control on a global scale, and put on some really fancy conferences in exotic places.
Yes, I noticed that. They, and the UN both. If we suddenly decide it is, in fact, in our strategic interest to go in, how quickly do you think they will change their minds?
they can't blame it on bush n cheney; no oil.
who else can they gonna blame?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/937043/posts "The United States Believes in the Great Potential of Africa [Remarks by President Bush]"
Dang. Do you feel it coming?
looks like a job for mr pulitzer prize..., aka, hitlery's husband
;
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