Americans Continue To Flee Liberia Rebels Loot Homes, Smash Windows While Foreigners Wait In Line To Be Evacuated

Bands of armed thugs roamed the streets of Monrovia looting homes and shops and smashing cars and windows Wednesday while hundreds of people lined up outside the U.S. Embassy in hopes of being evacuated.

Many Americans are among the more than 300 foreigners who have been airlifted out of the capital, where the stench of bodies fills the streets after the worst outbreak of violence in three years in Monrovia.

“I didn’t feel like there was anything more I could do at the present time in Liberia,” Tanya Bernath, a 29-year-old New Yorker who works for the international relief agency Lutheran World Service, said after U.S. helicopters flew her two hours to safety in neighboring Sierra Leone.

“Everybody was trapped,” Bernath said from Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital. She was waiting to continue on to Dakar, Senegal, where a large international airport provides many flights to the United States and Europe.

Navy Cmdr. Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the U.S. European Command who is in Freetown, said about half of those evacuated Tuesday and Wednesday were Americans. An Egyptian official said one-fourth of the evacuees were Americans.

About 470 Americans live in Liberia, mostly in Monrovia, including 48 employed at the U.S. Embassy. American officials say nobody has been ordered to leave but a team of 18 Navy SEAL commandos was flown to Liberia to reinforce security at the U.S. Embassy.

Although the violence in Monrovia was not directed at U.S. citizens, the military nevertheless dispatched two AC-130 gunships to Sierra Leone. The U.N. envoy to Liberia, Anthony Nyakyi, said a cease-fire was reached between government troops and rebels who have been holding hundreds of Liberians, Lebanese and other foreign civilians hostage at a military base in the capital.

The conflict among seven rebel factions has killed more than 150,000 people and left at least half the country’s 2.3 million people homeless.