UN peacekeepers on Sunday arrested a dissident rebel leader and seized weapons in a clampdown on the Liberian capital on the last day of a campaign to disarm fighters in the west African state.
General Philip Kamara of the main rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and one other still-unidentified LURD member were arrested at Kamara's home in Monrovia's Paynesville district, UN military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Brendan Geraghty confirmed.
Two AK-47 rifles were seized, UN mission spokesman James Boynton added.
Ghanaian peacekeepers told AFP in Paynesville that some 80 LURD fighters had been detained along with other weapons.
The seized weapons looked to be among those used in riots on Thursday and Friday, which spread from the densely populated district across Monrovia, stirring fears of a resumption of the conflict that has battered Liberia for nearly 14 years.
An AFP correspondent saw the bodies of six people killed in the two days of violence that also left dozens of injured with burns, cuts and bullet wounds. Churches, religious schools and mosques were torched, and looting was rampant.
The houses of two LURD political leaders, key members of the national transitional government, were also razed.
The unrest in Monrovia, coupled with ethnic tensions pitting mostly Muslim Mandingos - from whom LURD drew its strength - against other mainly Christian ethnicities, showed that the capital remains well-armed despite a massive UN disarmament operation, which ended its voluntary phase on Sunday.
Some 93,000 people from three warring factions including LURD enrolled in the program that carried an initial 50 million dollar price tag, according to the latest UNMIL figures.
Only 26,000 weapons were collected at the eight disarmament sites nation-wide, including three in LURD territory, even as reports abounded that sizeable caches were being hidden or sneaked out over Liberia's porous borders with northern neighbour Guinea and Ivory Coast to the east for future use.
Six west African heads of state are due here Wednesday to mark the official disbanding of the armies of former president Charles Taylor and the rebel movements who took arms against them in a 1999 civil war that was declared over in August of last year.
Comments
Comments are closed.