International aid and refugee agencies on Tuesday voiced growing concern about a brutal surge in fighting in Liberia in recent days, warning that the humanitarian situation in the west African state was catastrophic.
”The situation is extremely desperate,” UN humanitarian coordinator spokesperson Daniel Austburger told journalists in Geneva, while a French aid group said in Paris that both the food and the health situation in the capital Monrovia had deteriorated dramatically.
The UN refugee agency said that it had lost contact with many of the 15 000 Sierra Leonean refugees in camps around Monrovia, while refugee evacuations by ship had also ground to a halt because of the fighting.
Tens of thousands of displaced people and refugees are crammed into Monrovia, and hundreds of terrified Liberians have also sought shelter in United Nations (UN) compounds there, according to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
”Needless to say we are extremely concerned, amid reports of shelling heavy loss of life and civilian casualties,” UNHCR spokesperson Kris Janowski said.
”The High Commissioner has been urging a rapid deployment of an international peacekeeping force in Liberia to put an end to this humanitarian quagmire,” Janowski added.
Fighting was raging unabated in the capital Monrovia where Liberian authorities said clashes between rebels and government forces had claimed the lives of up to 700 civilians in recent days.
The UNHCR said it believed that one of the refugee camps around Monrovia had been overrun by Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy rebels and that it was not sure where the refugees were.
The UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) said the number of recorded cases of cholera around Monrovia had quadrupled in the space of six weeks to more than 1 600, and 15 people had died.
”The security situation is such that we don’t know if there are many more cases,” said Fadela Chaib of WHO, warning that stocks of medicines to treat the disease in Liberia appeared to have run out.
In Paris, the Action Against Hunger aid group issued a statement saying movement in the capital had become practically impossible for aid workers.
”War casualties and the wounded are more and more numerous, there are more and more assaults and acts of plunder being committed by combatants, and the sanitary and food situation is deteriorating dramatically,” the group said.
The UN evacuated its foreign aid workers from Monrovia on Monday, the third time it has pulled staff out of the country in recent weeks, the UN’s humanitarian coordination office said.
Liberians working for the aid agencies were braving the fighting to try to deliver aid, but water and food deliveries were suspended, Austburger said.
”The chaos in Monrovia is of a kind that makes humanitarian operations even more difficult, it’s not just the fighting but a very large number of assaults on humanitarian personnel,” he added. – Sapa-AFP