Rebels Take Over As Liberia Falls Into Anarchy

Rebels ruled the streets for a seventh straight day Friday, shooting and looting and forcing the United Nations, Red Cross and other international agencies to pull out of Liberia.

Terrified Liberians held little hope for a peaceful resolution.

“There’s no future for any young person in this country anymore,” said Martha Buoh, the mother of two teenage boys and whose gas station went up in flames.

“All of what I have worked for has been destroyed,” said Thomas Toure, who owns a mini-market and said he’ll move to neighboring Sierra Leone or Guinea, where he has relatives.

On the heels of an evacuation of 157 Americans and nearly 900 other foreigners, the United Nations and Red Cross announced they were pulling out, leaving what U.N. authorities said were an estimated 60,000 homeless people roaming the seaside capital looking for food and shelter.

Government troops resumed shelling of the military barracks where thousands of supporters of warlord Roosevelt Johnson are holed up.

At least 30 African peacekeepers were being held captive at the barracks, where people were surviving on boiled rice.

Witnesses said two children were killed and 17 people were wounded by mortar fire at the barracks Friday morning. Shelling the night before killed seven people in a barracks church, the witnesses said.

Government troops - many of whom are former rebels brought into the military when a peace accord was reached last year - were reported ransacking and taking over houses.

“Nowhere is safe, not even your bathroom,” said Martha Sebwe, a nurse who fled to the upscale Mamba Point Hotel where 500 people are holed up.

U.N. agencies reported “absolute anarchy” throughout Liberia’s capital, said its New York spokesman, Sylvana Foa, with bodies in the streets and “wanton looting” of U.N. offices, stores and private homes.

Red Cross spokesman Rolin Wavre said vandals damaged its headquarters.