Some 5 000 people on Thursday tried to leave Monrovia as a top humanitarian worker called for immediate distribution of food to tens of thousands living rough in the battle-scarred Liberian capital.
Some 5,000 Ghanaians and Liberians thronged Monrovia’s port for two days trying to get on board a Ghanaian navy ship sent by Accra to evacuate its nationals.
Ultimately the ship left at around 1:45 pm (1345 GMT) with between 700 and 800 people on board the ship, which had been scheduled to sail on Wednesday.
”We are worn out, we were elbowing each other for hours,” said a fatigued man who failed to make the journey.
Pro-government militiamen tried to maintain order at the port, witnesses said, adding that the Ghanaian crew had to use a fire hose to control the crowd.
Meanwhile, life returned to normal in Monrovia, which was under a rebel siege until recently, following Tuesday’s truce between insurgents controlling almost the entire country and the government of President Charles Taylor.
The truce, which aims at ending a four-year war that has spread chaos across west Africa, calls for a new unity government that excludes Taylor.
More shops and offices opened in the war-ravaged city, where tens of thousands are living in abysmal conditions with very little food available.
Alain Kassa, the local head of Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors without Borders) warned that the food shortage would cause further disaster.
”The humanitarian situation is already catastrophic in Monrovia, especially since people have not been receiving regular supplies of food since March,” he said.
Kassa said that if food was not rapidly distributed to people in transit or refugee camps, there would be ”frightening malnutrition.”
He said the minimum health requirement for this city ”which now houses one million people (is) 1 000 hospital beds.”
Meanwhile, Information Minister Reginald Goodridge warned that Taylor’s exclusion from a transitional process to end war would lead to fresh violence.
”Any disorderly transition will be a bad precedent and will lead to violence, political revenge and instability,” he said.
Goodridge hedged a question on whether Taylor would step down to pave the way for a transitional unity government in line with the truce.
”The process should be a soft landing. If you don’t understand the concept of soft landing, then you should understand the concept of crash landing,” Goodridge said.
Taylor was indicted on June 4 for war crimes by a UN-backed court in Sierra Leone over his role in that country’s 10-year civil war, marked by extremes of brutality.
The Liberian leader, a key player in an earlier seven-year civil conflict which ended with his election in 1997, is under UN sanctions for his perceived support to former Sierra Leonean rebels in return for the so-called ”blood diamonds” they mined.
Goodridge said the indictment by the UN-backed court was a ”political decision intended to humiliate President Taylor.
”How can one allegedly indict President Taylor for crimes allegedly committed in Sierra Leone?” he asked, adding: ”He was not accused of any crimes against humanity in the Liberian civil war when he led the largest faction.” – Sapa-AFP