Liberian Factions Take War To Streets Ghana Peace Summit Collapses; Aid Worker Warns Of Cholera Epidemic

Rival factions battled Wednesday in the streets of the Liberian capital, pounding one another with machine gun fire and grenades as peace talks outside the warring country collapsed.

The talks in nearby Ghana were called off after most West African leaders failed to show. Even before the cancellation, there had been doubts the summit would succeed because Liberian warlords Charles Taylor and Alhaji Kromah refused to attend.

Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, closing the aborted summit, warned warring faction leaders that West African nations are on the verge of pulling their peacekeeping forces out of Liberia, given faction leaders’ flouting of an August peace accord.

After relative calm in Monrovia on Tuesday, fighting erupted early Wednesday and quickly moved into the Mamba Point diplomatic district, where bullets whizzed down deserted streets just blocks from the U.S. Embassy.

In one brutal scene, fighters from one faction grabbed an unarmed man from a rival group, beat him, stripped him naked and ordered him to run - then shot him in the back and killed him.

“We are holding the cease-fire, but they are not,” said one commander of Taylor’s National Patriotic Front who calls himself General Lion.

One of five aid workers who recently returned to Monrovia warned Wednesday that a cholera epidemic was imminent unless civilians obtain fresh drinking water soon.