U.S. Steps Up Evacuation of Foreigners From Liberia

WASHINGTON â€”  The Pentagon ordered a three-ship naval task force to head for increasingly chaotic Liberia on Thursday as U.S. forces already in Monrovia began patrolling the capital’s dangerous streets, picking up Americans and other foreigners who had been unable to reach the U.S. Embassy to board evacuation flights.

After a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at one evacuation helicopter, U.S. military authorities temporarily suspended the daytime flights even though the craft was not hit. Daytime flights were resumed later Thursday to put the evacuation on a round-the-clock schedule.

West African peacekeeping troops, who have been deployed to maintain order in Liberia after years of civil conflict, joined warring Liberian militias in “very heavy� looting, disrupting a United Nations food distribution system that feeds about 1.5 million people throughout Liberia, U.N. officials said in New York.

Mobs broke into the U.N. headquarters in Monrovia. Looters also tried to invade the U.S. Embassy compound where Ambassador William Milman lives but were driven off by American troops guarding the property.

The Liberian conflict involves seven rival factions battling for power in the West African country. It has killed more than 150,000 people and left at least half the country’s 2.3 million people homeless.

A peace accord was supposed to clear the way for elections this year, but the most serious fighting in three years broke out Saturday when government troops tried to force Roosevelt Johnson, who was recently fired as minister of rural development, from his home to face charges stemming from earlier clashes that killed several people in Monrovia.

West African peacekeepers, numbering about 12,000 and coming mostly from Nigeria, were unable to stem the fighting as it spread through the capital.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said U.S. troops in the Liberian capital picked up about 150 people, half of them Americans, from hiding places around the city and took them in a convoy to the headquarters of the West African peacekeeping force. There, they boarded helicopters for the flight to Freetown in neighboring Sierra Leone, he said.

“Until this morning, all evacuations had taken place from the embassy,� Burns said. “Now we’re beginning to go out to points where groups of Americans and . . . [other] foreigners are located . . . because they can’t make their way to the embassy.�

Another State Department official said the military plans to use helicopters to rescue other foreigners from hiding places outside the capital and fly them directly to Sierra Leone.

About 900 U.S. military personnel--almost double the 470 American civilians thought to have been in the country at the start of the unrest--are participating in the evacuation, according to a senior Pentagon official.

In addition, 600 Marines are members of the naval task force, headed by the amphibious assault ship Guam, that is steaming toward Liberia. The Pentagon also announced that additional helicopters were shipped from bases in the United States to join in the airlift.

The Pentagon official, who briefed reporters on the condition that he not be identified by name, said the naval ships will take 10 to 12 days to reach the Liberian coast, indicating that the Defense Department is preparing for what could be a long operation.

“If this thing wraps up in four or five days, then the ships will turn around and go back,� the officer said. “This is just a precaution. . . . We’re planning on contingencies that may or may not happen, and we just need--because of the time involved--to get these ships down there.�

Late Thursday, the State Department said about 150 Americans and several hundred other foreigners had been evacuated.

“There are still Americans outside of the embassy compound,� an administration official added. “But we still have confidence that no Americans have been injured and no Americans have been targeted. We can continue to be prudent in how we operate.�