Rebels take Liberia's second largest city

Rebels captured Liberia’s second-largest city today, defeating President Charles Taylor’s embattled forces on a new front and depriving him of his last significant port outside the besieged capital.

Gen. Benjamin Yeaten, a leading government commander, confirmed that the strategic city of Buchanan, 60 miles southeast of Monrovia, fell to fighters from Liberia’s second rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, by nightfall.

Yeaten said government troops remained on the outskirts of the city and were planning a counterattack.

Taylor’s forces took off running as rebels advanced into Buchanan, said John Mensah, a resident reached by telephone, who added the rebels are “now in complete control of Buchanan.”

During the rebel takeover, the Buchanan office of the international humanitarian group Merlin was looted, according to Merlin office workers in the capital.

The attack and quick victory at Buchanan came as Liberia’s leading rebel movement, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, pressed its bloody nine-day-old siege of the capital, Monrovia, in fighting that has killed hundreds.

“Taylor must go,” said Joe Wylie, spokesman for the leading rebel movement, saying only international “whining about civilian casualties” was stopping insurgents from a final push to topple the Liberian leader.

“He’s getting weaker and weaker,” Wylie said. “He should not face us in a final military showdown that will just take lives.”

The Movement for Democracy in Liberia, which until recently had largely heeded ceasefire pledges, claimed Taylor’s forces had provoked the offensive on Buchanan with attacks on rebel positions outside the city in recent days.

Rebel official Boi Bleaju Boi pledged insurgents would open the southeastern city’s port up to peace forces, should they choose to land there.

Tens of thousands of refugees from the capital in recent days had flooded east into Buchanan, desperate to escape the shelling, grenade blasts and machine-gun fire of Monrovia.

Tonight many took flight again, picking their way back along the coast toward Monrovia.

Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea had rushed overnight to the developing eastern front, which brings the smaller, but better-armed and better-disciplined second rebel movement into active battle against Taylor’s already stretched-thin forces.

Taylor, a former warlord behind 14 years of nearly constant conflict in once-prosperous Liberia, is holed up in his seaside mansion in Monrovia.

His forces in the capital are battling to turn back rebel drives toward downtown, the heart of Taylor’s government.

Rebels hold the capital’s port, and with it food and vital aid for the desperate city of more than 1.3 million and its surrounding refugee camps.

Government fighters claimed to be back in control Monday of a northern capital suburb around one span, Stockton Bridge, after rebels gained a foothold on Monrovia’s mainland over the weekend.

Residents trickled out, with many uncertain whether to stay or run.

Rebel forces now hold more 60% of Liberia, grinding down Taylor’s forces in their three-year-old battle to oust him.

Reopening of hostilities on the second front came with military and diplomatic representatives of West African nations, the United Nations and the United States meeting in Accra, Ghana, for another day of talks on a peace force for Liberia.

West Africans have promised such a mission since soon after rebels launched their siege of the capital in early June.

The United States, which oversaw Liberia’s 19th century founding by freed American slaves, has pledged support.

It insists Liberia’s neighbours and the United Nations must take the lead.