UN missions find towns of rotting corpses in Liberia

The first UN peace missions to Liberia's rebel-held far east have found deserted towns emptied of all but looting insurgents, and terrorized civilians under rebel grip or lying rotting, dead, in the bush.

A reporter accompanying General Daniel Opande, the Kenyan commander of Liberia's 3-month-old UN peace force, saw hamlet after hamlet still bloodied by pillaging fighters, or by persistent clashes between rebels and government hard-liners.

"There is no war, no more ground for you to gain," Opande exhorted rebels in the eastern town of Griae -- newly attacked, sacked and burned by the insurgents, four months after their leader signed the West African nation's peace deal.

Playing out in territory under control of the smaller of Liberia's two rebel movements, the continuing devastation underscores the difficulty a still-fledgling UN peace mission faces in ending rule by AK-47 in Liberia after 14 years of unchecked bloodletting.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/11/10/2003075325