Gunshots trail refugees in lawless Liberia

AFTER walking for two days, Siatta Golafale gave birth by the roadside helped by a nurse who like her was fleeing the sound of gunfire in Liberia’s lawless countryside.

Breastfeeding her day-old baby boy at a clinic in a teeming refugee camp, she wonders when she will be on the move again.

“I am tired of running. I don’t want to run anymore,” she said. Like thousands of exhausted people streaming through Totota, a rundown town 72 miles northeast of the capital Monrovia, Golafale packed her meagre belongings as soon as she heard the rattle of gunshots in Gbatala, a town up the road.

Inured to moving from one shelter to another during nearly 14 years of civil war, Liberians have learned that when shots ring out, you run first and ask questions later.

The government and fleeing civilians say Gbatala was attacked on Sunday by rebels known as Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), despite a peace deal signed last week which was and meant to end the violence once and for all.

LURD achieved its goal of forcing former President Charles Taylor to leave the country earlier this month, but skirmishing with government troops has barely ceased in the wild hinterland.

And the circumstances of the Gbatala assault remain unclear.

LURD denies raiding the government-held town and most of the terrified residents did not wait to check who the aggressors were.

Those who did see the attackers saw gunmen dressed in black with red bandannas -- a description which could fit either rebels or the government’s rag-tag militias, often accused of opening fire near villages to scare people away and loot their homes.

But with refugees flooding Totota, talk of a rebel advance has spread panic like wildfire in three nearby camps for people already displaced by the war, sending hundreds more on the move.

“When I see people going, I go,” said Lavela Momolu, 22, as he joined the steady stream of people fleeing south, his camp registration card pinned to his trousers.

Aid workers said it would be a disaster if the 60,000 now living in the Maimu I, II and III camps left en masse for Monrovia as the capital is already choked by hundreds of thousands of refugees with little food or water.

“Last night we tried to reassure the people here, we told them the gunfire was still far off,” said Dorbor Kabbah, a physician at a Medecins Sans Frontieres clinic.

“These camps have shelters, latrines, water hand-pumps. If people flee they will have nowhere to go and we will have to start from scratch again.”