THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 12, 1996 TAG: 9604120577
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
The Pentagon ordered five Navy ships, including four from Norfolk, to head for increasingly chaotic Liberia on Thursday as U.S. forces in Monrovia began patrolling the capital's dangerous streets.
The ships, carrying 1,500 Marines and 1,500 sailors, were ordered to steam from the Adriatic Sea in the eastern Mediterranean to aid in the evacuation of Americans and other friendly civilians from Liberia.
The 4,200-mile trip, expected to take more than a week, was being made by the amphibious assault ship Guam, dock landing ships Tortuga and Portland and destroyer Conolly, all from Norfolk. The oiler Big Horn, no home port assigned, also was in the flotilla.
The ships are carrying about 20 helicopters, including the Navy's Sea Knight, which would be used to evacuate people from Liberia; and Marine Hueys and Super Cobra gunships.
The action was ordered as unbridled looting spread through Monrovia. Armed Liberian marauders broke into the grounds of the U.S. Embassy residence there Thursday but were driven back in a brief exchange of gunfire with U.S. special forces, The Washington Post reported.
The clash, reported by a European diplomat and confirmed by U.S. officials in Washington, marked the first direct involvement by American soldiers in the street violence and anarchy that have overwhelmed the Liberian capital in the past six days. At the same time, U.S. troops began escorting American civilians to safety from the homes and other buildings around the city where they have sought refuge from the shooting and banditry.
The gun battle around the residence caused no casualties among the American defenders, and Ambassador William Milam was not inside, U.S. officials said. But the clash dramatized the accelerating descent into chaos on Monrovia's streets, where armed youths from a hodgepodge of tribal militias have engaged in a wave of pillage and robbery without apparent opposition from their chiefs.
West African peace-keeping troops, who have been deployed to maintain order in Liberia after years of civil conflict, joined warring Liberian militias in ``very heavy'' looting, U.N. officials said in New York.
About 900 U.S. military personnel - almost double the 470 American civilians thought to have been in the country at the start of the unrest - are participating in an evacuation of Americans and other foreigners, a senior Pentagon official said.
The evacuation forces will more than double with the Navy flotilla's arrival. Together the amphibious ships are capable of evacuating up to 2,500 people. They, along with the Norfolk-based amphibious transport dock Trenton, have spent the past 2 1/2 months in the Adriatic, where they were prepared to assist NATO peace keepers in Bosnia. They began their six-month Mediterranean deployment out of Norfolk on Jan. 26.
The ships carry a variety of trucks, amphibious vehicles and medical supplies.
A Pentagon officer said the ships were sent only as a precaution.
``If this thing wraps up in four or five days, then the ships will turn around and go back,'' the officer said. ``We're planning on contingencies that may or may not happen and we just need - because of the time involved - to get these ships down there.''
U.S. military personnel have been using Air Force helicopters to evacuate residents. But 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. Daytime flights were resumed later Thursday to put the evacuation on an around-the-clock schedule.
State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said U.S. troops in the Liberian capital picked up about 150 people, half of them Americans, from hiding places around the city and took them in a convoy to the headquarters of the West African peace-keeping force where they boarded helicopters for the flight to neighboring Freetown, Sierra Leone.
``Until this morning, all evacuations had taken place from the embassy,'' Burns said. ``Now we're beginning to go out to points where groups of Americans and . . . foreigners are located . . . because they can't make their way to the embassy.''
Another State Department official said the military plans to use helicopters to rescue other foreigners from hiding places outside the capital and fly them directly to Sierra Leone.
International relief workers foresee a vast crisis in the days ahead.
``As the situation worsens like this, we are becoming increasingly worried about getting fuel, water and food for people who have had to sit this out,'' said Jerry Glantz, a U.N. official here. He said that with no cease-fire there was little chance of delivering relief supplies. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The Los Angeles Times, The New
York Times, The Washington Post and staff writers Jack Dorsey and Dale
Eisman. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
Ships sent: Tortuga, Portland, Guam, Conolly, Big Horn
Map by JOHN EARLE, The Virginian-Pilot
5 Navy ships that were stationed off Bosnia and Herzogovina were
ordered Thursday to steam to Liberia to aid in the evacuation of
Americans and friendly civilians.
by CNB