Rebels have captured Liberia’s second-largest city of Buchanan, defeating President Charles Taylor’s embattled forces on a new front and depriving him of his last significant port outside the besieged capital.
Monday’s capture of the strategic city of Buchanan, 100 kilometres southeast of Monrovia, the capital, came as deliberations on a peace mission for the West African nation showed no sign of progress.
Rebel forces now hold more than 60% of Liberia, grinding down Taylor’s forces in their three-year battle to oust him.
General Benjamin Yeaten, a leading government commander, confirmed that Buchanan fell to fighters from Liberia’s second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, by nightfall.
Yeaten said government troops remained on the outskirts of the city and were planning a counterattack.
Taylor’s forces took off running as rebels advanced into Buchanan, said John Mensah, a resident reached by telephone there, who added the rebels were ”now in complete control of Buchanan.”
During the rebel takeover, the Buchanan office of the international humanitarian group Merlin was looted, according to Merlin office workers in the capital.
The attack and quick victory at Buchanan came as Liberia’s leading rebel movement, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, pressed its bloody nine-day-old siege of Monrovia, in fighting that has killed hundreds.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned rebels that they are likely to be barred from any future leadership role in the country because of their reckless attacks on civilians.
”I cannot see how they would expect the people to accept them, after the suffering they’ve put them through,” Annan said. He also said that those who cause suffering will be held accountable for any war crimes.
”Taylor must go,” said Joe Wylie, spokesperson for the leading rebel movement, saying only international ”whining about civilian casualties” was stopping insurgents from a final push to topple the Liberian leader.
”He’s getting weaker and weaker,” Wylie said. ”He should not face us in a final military showdown that will just take lives.”
The Movement for Democracy in Liberia, which until recently had largely heeded cease-fire pledges, claimed Taylor’s forces had provoked the offensive on Buchanan with attacks on rebel positions outside the city in recent days.
Rebel official Boi Bleaju Boi pledged insurgents would open the southeastern city’s port up to peace forces, should they choose to land there.
Tens of thousands of refugees from the capital in recent days had flooded east into Buchanan, desperate to escape the shelling, grenade blasts and machine-gun fire of Monrovia.
On Monday, many took flight again, picking their way back along the coast toward Monrovia.
Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea had rushed overnight to the developing eastern front, which brings the smaller, but better-armed and better-disciplined second rebel movement into active battle against Taylor’s already stretched-thin forces.
Chea, contacted by telephone, told The Associated Press that rebels of the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy had taken the northern town of Gbarnga, Taylor’s base during a ruinous seven-year civil war that Taylor launched in 1989.
Fighting in Liberia often sees back-and-forth battles for towns, with one side capturing a community, then retreating.
Taylor, a former warlord behind 14 years of nearly constant conflict in once-prosperous Liberia, is holed up in his seaside mansion in Monrovia.
Rebels hold Monrovia’s port, and with it food and vital aid for the desperate city of more than 1,3-million and its surrounding refugee camps.
Government fighters claimed to be back in control on Monday of a northern capital suburb around one span, Stockton Bridge, after rebels gained a foothold on Monrovia’s mainland over the weekend.
Residents trickled out, with many uncertain whether to stay or run. Bombardments have killed hundreds of civilians since the latest rebel siege of the capital began July 19.
The rebel forces are allegedly backed by neighbouring Guinea and Ivory Coast, who blame Taylor for cross-border attacks that threaten their own stability.
Meanwhile, military and diplomatic representatives of West African nations, the United Nations and the United States were meeting in Accra, Ghana, for another day of talks on a peace force for Liberia.
West Africans have promised such a mission since soon after rebels launched their siege of the capital in early June. But disputes over funding have slowed deployment, with debt-strapped Nigeria — West Africa’s military power — asking for more financial assistance from the United States.
The United States, which oversaw Liberia’s 19th century founding by freed American slaves, has pledged support, but insists Liberia’s neighbours and the United Nations take the lead.
US President George Bush on Friday ordered troops to take position off Liberia’s Atlantic coast in readiness for any peace mission.
Nigerian Brigadier General Festus Okwonkwo, who would oversee any Nigerian mission, called deployment this week ”unlikely” as he went into meetings with representatives of other West African countries, UN peacekeeping operations and the US military’s European Command. – Sapa-AP
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