No Time to be in Monrovia, but New Aid Arrives Safely

Baltimore, July 22, 2003 — With danger high in Monrovia, Liberia, and civilian casualties there mounting, Lutheran World Federation staff and their families are seeking shelter and are prepared to resume work when it is safe enough to do so. They have taken refuge with other residents or are fleeing the city because of danger from mortars, rockets and artillery shells. LWF is providing emergency food to some 300 people sheltering in the Lutheran Church compound in the city, LWF representative in Liberia Charles Pitchford said today.

"There are rockets falling in the streets - no way to carry on right now," another LWF staffer, Jarsiah Weedor, told Lutheran World Relief today. Like other residents of Monrovia who have an escape route, he is taking his family out of town. Weedor, project manager for an LWF-LWR agriculture project, planned to travel south today to the area around Monrovia's international airport, he said.

Meanwhile, $1.3 million-worth of new aid from LWR for displaced people is safe and ready for use as soon as conditions permit. Seven shipping containers of health kits, newborn kits, clothing, bedding and medicines for LWF and for Phebe Hospital, a Lutheran institution in rural Liberia, were safely moved from the port and stored in LWF warehouses on Saturday, Pitchford reported, just before the latest fighting all but paralyzed the city.

LWF staff have received two months of advance pay to help them weather the current crisis, Pitchford said. Camps of displaced people on the edge of Monrovia that LWF helps manage and supply are inaccessible for now, he said in a message sent via Action by Churches Together, the Geneva-based emergency alliance that includes LWF and LWR.

Pitchford, who is sheltering with his family in a residential compound in Monrovia, has received some positive news from rural Liberia. "Many of our staff members have also fled to the outlying areas," he said, "and have confirmed over the phone that they are safe."