Americans Liberia

Rebel troops continued to bear down on the Liberian capital Wednesday, and U.S. officials said they are arranging special flights to evacuate Americans. The flights, to begin Saturday, will allow several hundred American citizens to leave Liberia because of the deteriorating situation, U.S. officials in Washington said. The State Department is strongly urging the estimated 2,000 Americans in this West African nation to leave. Several miles off Monrovia, four U.S.

U.S. Marines protecting the American Embassy in Liberia's capital opened fire again Monday, and sporadic shooting echoed throughout the city after the deadline passed for a truce promised by dominant faction leader Charles Taylor. In fact, hundreds of Taylor's militiamen and allies continued to pour into the city center Monday to increase their manpower around the besieged military training camp at the center of the battles.

The U.S. government Tuesday started evacuating Americans and other foreigners from civil-war-racked Liberia as renewed factional fighting raged for a fourth day. Officials in Monrovia, the capital of the West African country, said the first 26 evacuees--reportedly all Americans--reached neighboring Sierra Leone late Tuesday aboard an MH-53 helicopter. Another helicopter was ready to take out another load of civilians.

Inside the kitchen of the U.S. Embassy in this battle-scarred West African capital, members of five different ethnic groups are working side by side. One Liberian pours pancake batter into a pan and hands it to the cook. Another is taking inventory. To his right, a man is writing up a receipt. To his left, the cashier is ringing up a bill. Together, they run the kitchen as smooth as grease--and nobody is quarreling.

The United States has evacuated most Americans from Liberia, and the situation in the country's strife-torn capital is becoming calmer, U.S. officials said Saturday. At the same time, U.N. agencies reported that American military personnel have begun to help distribute food to areas beyond the U.S. Embassy compound in Monrovia, the capital.

Prince Johnson, one of two rebel leaders besieging the capital of Liberia, threatened Tuesday to attack a detachment of U.S. Marines unless the United States or another foreign country intervenes to halt the Liberian civil war. At the same time, a group of West African countries announced that they will send a joint military force into Liberia in an effort to end the conflict and set up an interim government. There was no indication of when the multilateral force will be organized.

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 Americans jailed by Liberia for four months for their alleged role in a coup attempt last July were freed after President Samuel K. Doe ordered the charges dropped. Former Army Sgt. James Henry Bush, 40, a Vietnam War veteran from Raleigh, N.C., and William Elmer Curtis, 45, of Jersey City, N.J., said they plan to return to the United States today.

Rebel troops advanced to within 25 miles of the capital Thursday, and the Pentagon announced that a U.S. navy flotilla with more than 2,000 Marines is off Liberia in case American citizens need to be evacuated. Liberian President Samuel K. Doe refused to resign despite the advance of the insurgents, and he vowed to be the last person to leave the city. "Tough times never last. Tough people do," Doe told a group of foreign ambassadors, according to one envoy at the meeting.

Americans and other foreigners, heeding their governments' advice, began leaving Liberia on Friday to escape fighting between rebels and President Samuel K. Doe's army. The United States, British and other embassies advised their nationals to leave this West African country after an upsurge in rebel attacks this month. U.S. companies were winding down their operations. About 5,000 Americans and 200 Britons live in Liberia, a country founded by freed U.S. slaves in 1847.

The United States has evacuated most Americans from Liberia, and the situation in the country's strife-torn capital is becoming calmer, U.S. officials said Saturday. At the same time, U.N. agencies reported that American military personnel have begun to help distribute food to areas beyond the U.S. Embassy compound in Monrovia, the capital.

With armed looters controlling the Liberian capital's increasingly dangerous streets, the United States sent two more warships toward the country Friday to join a growing military presence that officials declared is solely intended to protect U.S. diplomats and fleeing foreigners. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said that the number of evacuees airlifted from Liberia by U.S. forces had topped 1,000, about 165 of whom were Americans.

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.

U.S. military helicopters had evacuated 82 Americans and more than 300 other foreigners from Liberia as of Wednesday, but officials said that amid continuing fighting other Americans were having difficulty reaching the fortified U.S. Embassy compound where the flights are originating. With the capital, Monrovia, still tense despite a partly effective cease-fire that began late Tuesday night, the U.S. government pledged to evacuate all Americans who want to leave the nation torn by civil war.

The archbishop of Monrovia led hundreds of people Sunday in praying for five slain American nuns whose bodies lay unrecovered in a battle zone four miles from the center of this besieged capital. Also Sunday, two rockets hit homes about half a mile from an airfield, killing a mother and her 5-year-old son. Six others were wounded. In this western African country, rebels loyal to Charles Taylor have been battling for control for nearly three years, overrunning all but Monrovia.

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.

A 32-year-old Liberian went on trial in the remote town of Saniquellie Monday, charged with the murder of an American Baptist missionary and her 10-year-old daughter, judicial sources said. Elizabeth Senter, 46, and her daughter, Rachel, were stabbed to death last November in their villa in Yekepa, near Saniquellie, 280 miles northeast of Monrovia. The accused, Benjamin Morris, a graduate of the Monrovia Baptist Theological Seminary, was detained a few days later.

Liberian rebels who control half of the capital have agreed to a cease-fire with the government forces of President Samuel K. Doe, diplomats said Monday. Doe's closest adviser, Sellie Thompson, was believed to have arranged the truce with rebel leader Prince Johnson without waiting for the president's approval, diplomats in Monrovia said. The cease-fire began Saturday, hours after government soldiers killed an American Baptist missionary in the capital.