The United Nations’s aid agencies will resume operations in Liberia on Friday after suspending their work following a fresh outbreak of violence that left at least 13 dead, a spokesperson said.
”It will restart today but I don’t know under what conditions,” said Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
”We were forced to suspend our humanitarian mission and restrict our movements because of the unrest,” she said in Geneva.
On Thursday, five UN aid agency cars were hijacked by unknown attackers, and a United Nation Children’s Fund vehicle was forced to abandon a trip to the capital, Monrovia, due to security fears, said Byrs.
The previous day, a convoy carrying Lurd rebel leader Sekou Damate Conneh to meet Liberian President Moses Blah came under attack in an eastern neighborhood of the capital.
At least seven people were killed in that shoot-out, and another six people died when retreating rebels threw hand grenades into a crowded market in another part of Monrovia, witnesses said.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) stopped aid operations for one day following the attacks, but said Friday it would return to work to help ease conditions in camps for about half a million people displaced internally in Liberia by 14 years of almost continuous war.
”Despite the disturbances this week in Monrovia, we are optimistic that while the situation remains fragile the situation will further improve with the deployment of peacekeepers across the country,” the UNHCR said in a statement.
The UN has eased a security alert in Liberia, enabling staff to work in areas up to 100km outside the capital, it added.
More than 100 international staff have been deployed to provide emergency aid to civilians in the West African country — the poorest nation in the world after two successive civil wars. — Sapa-AFP