A Liberian rebel group engaged in an all-out battle for the country’s war-torn capital said on Tuesday they have ordered their troops to stop fighting.
”Our troops are being told to ceasefire,” said Charles Benny, an official with the rebel movement Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or Lurd, currently in nearby Ghana for peace talks.
The call to stop fighting comes the day after a thunderous barrage of shells rained down on the city in the bloodiest fighting during the rebels’ latest attempt to seize the capital that began two months ago.
According to government officials some 600 people were killed in Monday’s fighting, but that number could not be independently verified. Aid workers and hospitals have said at least 90 people were killed, but expected the death count to rise.
Benny said he welcomed the announcement that Nigerian forces were ready to help lead a West African peacekeeping force in Liberia.
West African peacekeepers however have indicated they will not deploy to Liberia until a stable ceasefire is in place on the ground, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s spokeperson said on Tuesday.
Nigeria is to contribute the bulk of a planned 3 000-strong west African peacekeeping force being set up to help bring an end to fighting in Liberia, and the main combat element in its 1 500 troop vanguard.
But Nigerian spokesperson Remi Oyo said that fighting must halt before such a force is sent in.
”It doesn’t make sense to want to go to get into a jam from the beginning,” she said, as the region’s military chiefs met in Dakar to discuss arrangements for the mission.
”The idea is that the issue of a multinational force is acceptable to everybody on the ground,” she said.
The United States has also been under intense pressure to send troops to Liberia, a nation founded more than a century ago by freed American slaves. – Sapa-AP, Sapa-AFP