Some 5 000 people on Thursday tried to leave Monrovia as a top humanitarian worker called for immediate distribution of food to tens of thousands living rough in the battle-scarred Liberian capital.
At Kiffa, in the heart of the "triangle of poverty," the desert is synonymous with scorching winds, sand in the streets and a sky tinged by red dust.
An open-ended peace conference launched by Liberian President Charles Taylor to end a long civil war has been derided by civic groups and the opposition as a badly organised and futile project.
Ahmadou Kourouma, Ivory Coast’s leading novelist, has become the latest victim of a witch hunt on figures suspected of backing rebels in the country’s bitter two-month conflict.
French troops on Sunday created a buffer zone stretching through the centre of Ivory Coast to secure a fragile ceasefire in a month-long uprising that has left rebels in control of half the west African nation.