960428

Liberia fighting

draws in former

child soldiers

MONROVIA: When gunmen came to loot a rehabilitation centre for child soldiers during fighting in the Liberian capital, they did not just take the basketballs and teddy bears, they took several of the boys as well.

"We tried to sit down with them and tell them not to go back, but they went anyway," said 16-year-old Alphonso Gbeyor.

"People came over the fence and took everything. The boys were left with nothing, so they went back."

The Liberian-run Children's Assistance Programme in Sinkor was set up to counsel child fighters, return them to their families, send them to school or teach them a trade.

A third of Liberia's estimated 60,000 gunmen are thought to be under 18 years old. Human rights groups say many have been killed or wounded, or witnessed terrible atrocities. Many have taken part in killing, maiming or rape of civilians.

Liberia's brutal civil war began in December 1989, when Charles Taylor invaded from Ivory Coast.

The capital had been free of fighting since 1990 until clashes broke out on April 6 after the government tried to arrest Krahn warlord Roosevelt Johnson on murder charges.

Gunmen arrived at the CAP centre the same day and two Ghanaian peacekeepers guarding the compound were unable to stop them.

The fighters, who the boys said were followers of Taylor, leader of Liberia's biggest militia and a vice-chairman on the Council of State, helped themselves to food, clothes, school materials, mattresses and anything else they could carry, including the centre's teddy bears.

Some of the boys went with them, and the others fled to a home for unaccompanied child refugees from Sierra Leone run by CAP in a quiet area of the Paynesville suburb.

The orphanage is brightly painted with murals of Walt Disney characters, but staff say they do not have enough food for the new arrivals. Supplies for the 75 Sierra Leonean children are already short.

The boys were reluctant to be photographed, because they said the fighters had taken all their good clothes.

Gbeyor said he was afraid to venture out. "If my friends see me and they're holding an arm and I'm not holding an arm, they could do something to me," he said.

Several families driven out by the fighting are now camping at the CAP centre in Sinkor, and others come to fetch water from the hand pump. Washing is drying on the climbing frame and a few of the boys are still there.

Fifteen-year-old Boakar Johnson said he had spent two years as a fighter with Johnson's forces but quit because he was tired of fighting. He had started learning to be a graphic artist at the centre before the rebels came.

James Mulbah, 15, who also fought with Johnson, said he had left when his unit came under attack. "We were in the bush when the rebels came to chase us," he said.

Gbeyor fought with the ULIMO militia around Kakata and Bong Mines. He said he had been at the centre just three weeks before the clashes started, and had started school.

"I'm tired of fighting, if I wasn't tired, I would have gone back," he said. "I want to go to school."-Reuter