State radio reported yesterday that a civilian was shot point-blank eight times for refusing to hand over her car to fighters who began their looting rampage in the battle-scarred capital on Sunday just hours after the $US50 million ($67.59 million) disarmament campaign began.

And a fighter was killed by UN peacekeepers yesterday afternoon as he was trying to steal a vehicle, state radio said.

Eyewitnesses also said that another civilian was felled by a stray bullet, one of thousands of rounds of automatic weapons fired by the ex-combatants to strafe the city since Sunday, sending panicked and war-weary residents fleeing.

UN spokesman Patrick Coker acknowledged there had been deaths in the rioting but refused to confirm that any were the result of gunbattles with the Beninois peacekeepers patrolling eastern districts of the Atlantic coastal capital under the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).

"We don't have any figures," he said.

If confirmed, the deaths would mark the first clashes between Liberia's warring factions and international peacekeepers operating in the country since August, when Taylor fled into exile to end the second of two civil wars to batter the west African state since 1989, leaving more than 200,000 dead.

The peacekeepers have been under a UN mandate since October, when Monrovia was declared a weapons-free city.

Despite a indefinite curfew imposed yesterday by the Liberian transitional government, sounds of gunfire were heard early this morning, backed by the rumblings of UNMIL tanks rolling through the capital to set up new checkpoints around the city.

"The government is warning all those involved in the anti-peace action to desist forthwith, as the government and the international community will not condone the reckless and irresponsible attacks by mobs on peaceful citizens," interim chairman Gyude Bryant said in a radio address overnight.

"Ex-combatants involved now run the risk of being arrested and taken before a war crimes tribunal."

Combatants, most of them soldiers in Taylor's army or the irregular militias who fought alongside them in the rebel war that began in 1999, have run riot since Sunday to protest against inadequate incentives offered by the United Nations to disarm an estimated 40,000 young fighters.

The UN-backed disarmament process opened to great fanfare on Sunday, with some 1400 former government fighters handing over their weapons to a battalion of Bangladeshi peacekeepers at the Schieffelin military barracks outside Monrovia.

Unimpressed by the food rations, psychological counselling, vocational training or schooling offered in addition to a promised $US300 ($405) stipend, scores more left Schieffelin carrying the assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades they had intended to leave behind.

As the rioting fighters laid siege to UNMIL headquarters and the rest of the city yesterday, a new timetable was proposed, offering fighters $US75 ($101) immediately upon surrendering their weapons.

An additional $US75 ($101) will be distributed to each combatant upon completion of a three-week demobilisation program, followed by another $US150 ($202) dollars once they are reintegrated into their communities.

The project, which had been projected to open in three areas under UN control, was dramatically scaled back Tuesday as UNMIL has yet to deploy outside of Monrovia.