Looting follows Liberia rebel truce

Government troops are said to have been looting in the capital

Fighting in the Liberian capital Monrovia has given way to looting by government soldiers and militias after the main rebel group announced a ceasefire.

Correspondents in the city said the port was quiet after fighting had initially continued despite the truce called by the rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd).

But the French news agency AFP said its journalists had seen pro-government forces pile assorted goods on waiting jeeps, firing into the air as they claimed to have inflicted a crushing defeat on the invading rebels.

And other reports said President Charles Taylor's troops had roamed house-to-house under bombardment, robbing the city's residents at gunpoint.

President Taylor's forces said they had retaken the port area, after a three-day battle that has killed hundreds of civilians.

Click below to see a map of fighting and refugee movements in and around Monrovia

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BBC correspondent Tom McKinley said Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the West African regional body Ecowas, was viewing these developments with caution.

He said that if both sides were serious about a ceasefire they needed to offer more than words - peace talks would only succeed if there were a complete end to hostilities.

Some 250,000 people are sleeping rough seeking some kind of safety from fighting in the suburbs.

West African mediators in Ghana have suspended peace talks for a week, after the fighting continued past their deadline of 1000 GMT on Friday for both sides to respect a truce.

They said negotiations were too difficult under such circumstances.

Lurd say their ceasefire was called to avoid a "grotesque humanitarian catastrophe in Monrovia".

But Liberian General Benjamin Yeaten said "mopping-up operations" were going on at Po river, about 15km (nine miles) from the city centre.

Displaced

"We will pursue the enemy," he said. "After all the destruction they caused in Monrovia, they want a ceasefire."

Refugees continued to stream out of the port on Friday, despite the government's claim of victory there.

"Whether or not the port has been recaptured is not important," a woman said. "What we want is peace so we can go back home."

Aid worker's diary

Q&A: Liberia's conflict

In the city, hundreds of young people demonstrated for an end to the war , shouting "We want peace, no more war" and urging the United States to intervene militarily.

The head of the UN Refugee Agency, Ruud Lubbers, renewed calls for an international peacekeeping force to be sent to Liberia saying that "something needs to be done now to stop the killing and end the suffering."

Aid agencies say they are working against the clock to install health and water facilities to prevent outbreaks of disease in the impromptu camps, while health officials said the main hospital is crowded to bursting point.

Food is in short supply elsewhere and prices have rocketed.

In Washington, US President George W Bush on Thursday called on President Taylor to stand down "so that his country can be spared further bloodshed".

Lurd leaders have also said the Liberian president should resign immediately.

"It is like the US president and the rebel movement are speaking in concert," the BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh told the Network Africa programme.

Washington says it has no plans to send troops to Liberia, which was founded by freed 19th Century American slaves.

Arrest warrant

Last week's ceasefire collapsed after Mr Taylor said he would not step down before the end of his term in January - and then only if war crimes charges against him were dropped.

Lurd leaders said he was supposed to stand aside under the terms of the accord.

The United Nations-backed war crimes court for neighbouring Sierra Leone has issued an international arrest warrant against the Liberian president, accusing him of backing brutal rebels there.

The rebels have been fighting for three-years and made their first pushes into the capital this month.