Fighting reaches outside of Liberian capital

Fighting raged today in a northern suburb of the capital of war-torn Liberia and terrified civilians fled by the thousands.

Government troops and rebel forces were battling on the Atlantic Ocean beach of the Monrovia suburb of Virginia, a defence official said. Aid workers in the area said they could hear heavy firing.

One of the West African nation’s two rebel movements has advanced on the capital in a bid to drive out warlord-turned-President Charles Taylor, who was indicted this week for war crimes in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

Heavy rains made roads nearly impassable today but evidently failed to stop the offensive. Countless civilians struggled through rising waters to escape the fighting.

All seven of Monrovia’s camps for internally displaced people are now under the control of insurgents, a World Food Programme spokesman said.

The rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) has battled Taylor since 1999. Taylor was elected president in 1997, a year after a devastating seven-year civil war in Liberia ended.

He had sparked that war in 1986 with a failed coup attempt and emerged from the conflict as the country’s strongest warlord.