Rebels overran some towns and villages in northeastern Liberia (on the border with Ivory Coast), leaving scores of people killed or wounded. The rebels were also reported setting fire to villages in Nimba county, near the stronghold of the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). An unnamed government official claimed that the fighting involved government forces and MODEL rebels, which a MODEL legislator in the transitional government promptly denied. The United Nations confirmed the reported fighting, having sent a helicopter to overfly the area on the 2nd. After seeing burning villages, the UN dispatched a fact-finding mission to the area.
Special UN envoy to Liberia Jacques Klein urged France to send peacekeepers to Liberia, to address cross-border issues with neighboring Francophone states Ivory Coast and Guinea. Most of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) speak English as their international language. A contingent of 145 Philippine soldiers has departed on the 3rd, to serve at the UNMIL headquarters in administrative, postal, medical, transport and other non-combat positions.
Recent news reports claimed that former president Charles Taylor's son was in the Ukraine, negotiating for arms to launch a fresh attack from the Ivory Coast. The country already has a fair number of weapons in the wrong hands. Despite UNMIL calls for the warring parties to make Monrovia and its suburb weapons free, there were local press reports of a huge cache of arms and ammunition buried behind the house of the former leader of the militia navy command and on a nearby island. The residents of the area claim that militias still loyal to the one time general patrol the area at night.
United Nations officials also opened and inspected a 40-foot container on the 3rd, that had tons of assorted munitions imported by Taylor (just days before he went into exile in Nigeria). The shipment that arrived at Roberts International Airport on August 7 included two 60 mm mortars, 149 boxes of mortar ammunition, 67 boxes of rocket-propelled grenades, 299 boxes of AK-47 rifles and about 699,000 rounds of AK-47 ammunition. UN officials would not say where the shipment was manufactured or from where it might have originated. - Adam Geibel
