Heavy shelling in Monrovia kills more than 90

MONROVIA, Liberia: A thundering barrage of mortars shook Liberia’s capital yesterday, hitting two US Embassy compounds and residential neighbourhoods, and killing more than 90 people, as government and rebel forces fought over President Charles Taylor’s last stronghold. Wailing with grief, Liberians lined up bloodied, mangled bodies outside the US Embassy, demanding to know why Washington has not sent troops to end more than a decade of strife in the country founded by freed American slaves. With more than 360 people injured, it appeared to be the bloodiest single day of fighting in three rebel attempts to take Monrovia in the past two months.  Helicopters swept into the embassy yesterday, bringing in a Marine contingent to protect the facility and evacuating some foreigners. In Washington, officials announced that some 4,500 more American sailors and Marines have been ordered to position themselves closer to Liberia to be ready for possible duty in the embattled West African nation. “We’re concerned about our people,” US President George W Bush told a press conference in Crawford, Texas. But he indicated he had not yet decided the size of a US force that might be sent to help a promised West African peacekeeping mission in Liberia. “We continue to monitor the situation very closely,” Bush said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged Washington and West African states once again to commit troops. “I think we can really salvage the situation if troops were to be deployed urgently and promptly,” he said. During more than two hours of sustained mortar fire, a shell slammed into a US Embassy residential compound where some 10,000 terrified Liberians had taken refuge, killing 25 people, aid workers said. Many more were wounded in the strike, including two Liberian embassy guards. Across the street, in the sprawling embassy complex overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, a shell hit the commissary building. There were no reports of injuries there. After the blasts, enraged Liberians dragged bodies from the residential compound and lined them up in front of the embassy, next to a wall emblazoned with the American seal. “We’re dying here,” screamed some in the crowd, as two American servicemen in camouflage watched from behind bulletproof glass. One man held up a hastily scrawled sign: “Today G Bush kill(ed) Liberia people.” Down the hill from the Embassy, a small boy lay face-down in the grass — victim of another blast just yards away. Neighbourhood residents used a mat to carry away a man bleeding from the leg.

In a densely populated residential neighbourhood, a shell hit a house, killing 18 people in one strike, emergency workers at the scene said. At least 47 Liberians were killed in other strikes yesterday, said officials at Monrovia’s main John F Kennedy hospital and aid groups. At the hospital, patients screaming with pain lay on mattresses on the floor. More than 200 injured people arrived at the hospital in pick-up trucks, police cars and wheelbarrows. About 50 others were being treated at an International Committee of the Red Cross trauma centre and 112 at two clinics set up by French medical group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.