5 U.S. Nuns in Liberia Killed; Rebels Suspected : Africa: The Illinois-based missionaries had returned to the war-torn country after once fleeing the violence.

WASHINGTON —  Five American nuns engaged in humanitarian work in Liberia have been murdered, probably by rebels fighting one of Africa’s grisliest wars, the State Department confirmed Saturday.

The five, members of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ who had been missing for more than a week, were shot in two separate incidents, according to Roman Catholic Archbishop Michael Francis of Monrovia, the Liberian capital. Two were killed on a roadside, and three died in front of the convent where they had remained to tend to war victims and orphans. Their bodies have not been recovered, a church official said.

The State Department said Saturday that it is “shocked and appalled” by the deaths and condemned the attacks as cowardly. In a statement, spokesman Richard Boucher called on all factions to engage in an immediate cease-fire and to “resume serious negotiations to end the civil war.”

The slain missionaries were Sister Barbara Ann Muttra, a nurse from Springfield, Ill., who first went to Liberia in 1971; Sister Agnes Mueller, a nurse and teacher of Bartelso, Ill.; Sister Kathleen McGuire, a teacher from Ridgway, Ill.; and Sisters Shirley and Mary Joel Kolmer, first cousins and teachers from Waterloo, Ill.

The nuns, who were so committed to helping Liberians that they returned to Monrovia in mid-1991 after fleeing the violence there in 1990, worked at a compound in Gardnersville, a suburb of Monrovia, according to the headquarters of the order in Red Bud, Ill.

The head of the order, Sister Mildred Gross, said Saturday that the missionaries, all in their 50s and 60s, “actually wanted to go back. They felt very committed to the mission of the church and the people.” She said she had last talked to the women by telephone on Oct. 2.

About 60,000 people have died in the West African nation’s civil war since rebel leader Charles Taylor of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) invaded from neighboring Ivory Coast in 1989. An estimated 40,000 died from starvation during the NPFL’s 1990 siege of Monrovia, and atrocities are not unusual, according to international relief workers.

The vast majority of victims have been civilians. Many foreigners, including missionaries and relief workers, have also been beaten or detained. Since Oct. 20, Americans have been advised to leave Liberia.

Taylor’s forces have overrun all but the capital, where an interim government backed by a seven-nation West African peacekeeping force is in power.

But for the past 16 days, Monrovia has again been under siege by Taylor’s forces. Clashes pitting the NPFL against the peacekeepers and two allied Liberian factions are now at an impasse, U.S. officials said Saturday. Reports out of Monrovia this weekend suggest that civilians may again face the threat of starvation.

Archbishop Francis said earlier in the week that the sisters may have been kidnaped by Taylor’s troops, and the State Department pointedly said Saturday that it “holds the NPFL responsible for the safety of foreign nationals in territory under its control.”

But Taylor denies any involvement. In a rebel radio broadcast Saturday night, Taylor said it is not clear what happened to the nuns and insisted that his forces did not control the area around their convent.

“It is really no-man’s-land, so it is anybody’s guess what has happened to those nuns,” he said.

Fighting has raged near Gardnersville since the NPFL launched a new offensive on Oct. 15. Four student Liberian nuns were killed with the American sisters, according to the Vatican.

“The safety and welfare of the wounded and the defenseless motivated them and were their only concerns in the midst of war,” U.S. Ambassador to Liberia William H. Twaddell said in a message to the sisters’ headquarters.