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Ex soldiers riot
22/12/2003 22:26 - (SA)
Monrovia - Soldiers from the feared anti-terrorist units of former Liberian president Charles Taylor ran riot in Monrovia on Monday, angry that they had not received a promised pay-out for laying down their weapons, a UN spokesperson said.
Patrick Coker, a spokesperson for the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) conducting the campaign to disarm combatants from the west African state's 14 year war, said the soldiers were smashing windscreens and harassing civilians in the battle-scarred Atlantic coastal capital.
An estimated 600 members of the ATU have been paid a first installment of $75 by UNMIL, with another $225 due once they have completed a three-week demobilisation course.
The soldiers said that their weapons had been taken by commanders who did not submit their names for compensation, Coker said.
They are all among the 12 000 fighters who handed in their weapons in the first week of the process, which has since been suspended for a month to boost resources available to the estimated 40 000 combatants who fought in Liberia's back to back civil wars since 1989.
Coker said UNMIL troops moved in to quell the unrest in the city's eastern districts, where former government soldiers had run riot in the days following the December 7 start to the disarmament campaign in protest at the modest incentives offered to lay down their weapons.
Eyewitnesses said then that UNMIL peacekeepers clashed with still-armed former fighters, leaving 10 dead. The United Nations has yet to confirm the clashes.
Liberia has been under a tentative peace since Taylor, a warlord whose uprising in 1989 sparked the first civil war, accepted exile in Nigeria in mid-August.
West African troops, led by Nigeria, have been in the country since August and were in October turned into a UN peacekeeping force that is expected to number 15 000 by early next year.
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