Former Liberian soldiers ran riot in Monrovia’s red-light district on Monday, leaving one dead, amid confusion about their timetable for disarming.
Hundreds of fighters up-ended market stalls, broke windows and brandished their weapons in the melee, which ended with dozens of injuries. United Nations civilian police chief Mark Kroeker confirmed that one person was killed, though the nature of his injuries was not known.
An official with the UN Mission in Liberia (Unmil), speaking on condition of anonymity, said the fighters had shown up expecting to be transported to the disarmament site, but they had the wrong date.
Their enrolment into the programme, which aims to disarm and reintegrate an estimated 45 000 combatants from three warring factions, will come at a later date, the Unmil official said.
About 22 vehicles packed with armed UN police officers from Jordan and Nepal joined a squadron of the newly retrained Liberian national police force in defusing the situation.
The disarmament campaign, relaunched in mid-April after a five-month delay, is considered central to restoring a lasting peace to the West African state after 14 years of war.
Soldiers in the armies of former president Charles Taylor, whose flight into exile in August last year paved the way for a peace pact and power-sharing agreement, have repeatedly provoked clashes since the campaign began in December.
Three days of riots in December last year by the former soldiers following the launch of the process left a reported 12 people dead.
The soldiers have also reportedly set up roadblocks along the main Monrovia-Kakata highway to extort money and goods from vehicles travelling the road. Unmil peacekeepers have torn down the roadblocks and boosted patrols in the area, a Unmil military spokesman said last week.
Unmil disarmament chief Clive Jacknik said last week that 26 000 combatants have surrendered their weapons since the campaign was launched on December 7, roughly half of whom have been enrolled since the program resumed on April 15. — Sapa-AFP