Panicked, hurt civilians fleeing Liberian fighting

MONROVIA, Liberia -- Panicked, wounded civilians struggled Thursday to flee one of the bloodiest outbreaks of fighting of a 3-year-old insurrection in Liberia, as government forces battled what they said was a rebel attack on Gbarnga, President Charles Taylor's central stronghold.

Whole towns and refugee camps were emptying. Thousands fled into the bush or to the west and hoped-for safety in Monrovia, capital of the West African nation.

"This is no time to bluff -- life is what counts!" fleeing 27-year-old James Tenay said, scrambling into the trunk of a crowded taxi to escape Gbarnga.

He said Wednesday he was headed toward Monrovia, 150 miles away, "to let my family know that I am still alive."

The attack on Taylor's base in the heart of the nation marked a dramatic increase in hostilities between government forces and the shadowy rebels fighting them.

At a Lutheran-run hospital on the outskirts of Gbarnga, medical workers desperately sought vehicles to evacuate the injured. Many were women and children suffering gunshot wounds.

The army pulled its wounded from the hospital Wednesday. Many hospital workers abandoned their posts soon after. "For fear of their lives," said Mary Teah, a nurse.

Around her, doctors struggled to treat a wailing 4-year-old boy. His flesh hung in strips from an infected gunshot wound to the shoulder.

Dozens of women screamed in other wards. Some were in agony from what hospital workers said were bullet wounds in the abdomen.

Rebels advance

Rebels had been advancing on Gbarnga from at least two fronts late Wednesday.

Thursday, Taylor announced that the rebels had attacked the town at sunrise. Fighting was continuing, he said.

In Monrovia, residents listened to the president's live broadcast on hand-held radios.

"This country has a right to protect itself," Taylor declared on his own Kiss FM station, adding, "We must bring an end to this cycle of violence."

Security forces on Thursday blocked journalists from returning to Gbarnga. The fate of those at the hospital could not be learned.

An old conflict

Liberia, founded by freed U.S. slaves in the 19th century, has been locked in poverty and insecurity since a 1989-96 civil war. More than 150,000 people died in the civil war and 2.6 million were forced from their homes.

After leading the war in part from his military base at Gbarnga, Taylor, then a rebel warlord, won the presidency in a post-conflict 1997 election. Many of the fighters on both sides of the current conflict were combatants in the civil war.

Taylor blames the losing factions in the old conflict for starting the new one, and accuses neighboring Guinea of harboring the rebels.

Taylor, his government and military are under an arms embargo and other U.N. sanctions for what the United Nations said this week was ongoing arms- and diamond-running with rebels of neighboring Sierra Leone.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch last week accused Taylor's forces of atrocities in combating the insurrection, including burning alive and shooting dozens of civilians.

The U.S. rights group called the conflict a threat to overall security in West Africa. It likewise urged the United States to condition its military support to Guinea on an end to any support of the rebels.

Diplomats have privately accused Taylor of exaggerating the rebel threat in hopes of seeing the arms embargo lifted. Some have accused Taylor of masterminding the conflict as an excuse to cancel elections set for 2003.

Attempts by the Associated Press in neighboring Ivory Coast to reach the rebels at their base in Europe were unsuccessful Thursday.

A BBC interview with one rebel spokesman, William Hanson, earlier in the week degenerated quickly into indecipherable shouting by the rebel spokesman.

This attack, however, threatened Taylor's own base. He maintains a massive plantation there. One of the war-scarred country's few good roads conveys Mercedes back and forth from Monrovia to Gbarnga.