At least 12 die in fresh shelling of capital

AT least 12 civilians were killed yesterday as the heaviest shelling in a week of fighting rocked the centre of Liberia’s besieged capital Monrovia.

Residents sprinted for cover as the shells began falling shortly after dawn in the diplomatic quarter, which is packed with refugees.

Weeping uncontrollably, one woman cradled a two-week-old baby as she stood next to a body bag holding her sister, the child’s mother.

“What do they want to achieve?” cried a man nearby. “Innocent people are dying, not soldiers.”

Rebels have pushed President Charles Taylor’s forces into the centre of Monrovia following a three-year campaign against the Liberian leader, who is accused of war crimes by the United Nations.

Last Saturday, the insurgents launched their third attack in two months on the capital. Hundreds have died in the fighting since then.

About 20 shells landed within 10 minutes yesterday in the streets around the US embassy.

A school just blocks away where hundreds of refugees were crowded took a direct hit. Witnesses there said seven people were killed and at least a dozen wounded. An hour after the barrage, the corpses of five victims lay in body bags in the yard outside the school. A sixth, that of a little boy, lay curled in a corner.

A fresh attack after the main one sent wailing survivors running for cover, crouching under tables and pressing up against classroom walls, screaming.

Medicins Sans Frontieres, the French aid group, said another four dead bodies from the shelling had been brought to them. As the shelling subsided, angry residents surrounded the US embassy compound. “I want to tell George Bush to do something quickly,” said 28-year-old resident Emmanuel Sieh. “People are dying every day.”

Fighters “are launching at civilian targets, not military targets, and our people are dying”, said Vani Johnson, as he emerged from a basement.

A woman wrapped in white stood before the US embassy with her arms raised in the air. “We are tired! We are tired!” she cried. From inside the compound, a marine peered at her through binoculars.

US President George W Bush yesterday ordered US military ships to the Liberian coast to back the eventual deployment of West African peacekeepers, a White House statement said.

The Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, is expected to decide on Monday on sending a west African peacekeeping force to Liberia.

“The immediate task of the ECOWAS force is to reinforce a ceasefire and begin to create conditions where humanitarian assistance can be provided to the Liberian people,” the White House statement said.

The UN’s special representative to Liberia said the country has been “basically destroyed” by the conflict and that its only hope was for the international community to send more aid quickly. Jacques Paul Klein, who headed the UN mission in Bosnia, expressed doubts that a Nigerian-led regional peacekeeping force would arrive in Liberia within a week as promised.