Medical workers in Liberia said today that 547 bodies had been buried after a massacre of civilians on Sunday and that the death toll could reach 600. The interim Government has ordered two investigations into the killings, at Carter Camp, a farming area near Harbel, and officials said the Government forces did not do enough to stop the massacre. Survivors and the Government say that Charles Taylor's rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, carried out the killings.
On Wednesday, the President's office authorized the Defense Ministry to investigate the "alleged negligence of soldiers leading to the infiltration of rebels and the massacre of more than 400 men, women and children by Charles Taylor's rebels." Mr. Taylor's group has repeatedly denied responsibility and says a West African intervention force and the Government militia are to blame. Health workers at Harbel, 40 miles east of Monrovia, said most of the dead were women and children. They said more bodies had been found in the Du River and along its banks.
The international force captured the Harbel area from the rebels in February and controls it nominally, but the Government militia was guarding Carter Camp on the night of the massacre. The intervention force was sent to Liberia in 1990 by the Economic Community of West African states in an attempt to end the civil war. In addition to the Defense Ministry investigation, the interim President, Amos Sawyer, ordered a military advisory board to investigate the killings, and the United Nations special representative to Liberia, Trevor Gordon-Somers, arrived Wednesday to make his own investigation.
UNITED NATIONS, June 10 (Reuters) -- The Security Council has condemned the massacre in Liberia and warned that the killers will be held accountable. In a statement Wednesday, the Council "warns that those found responsible for such serious violations of international humanitarian law will be held accountable for such crimes." The statement did not explain how the killers might be punished.
The statement asked Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to begin a "thorough and full investigation" of the massacre, including "any allegations as to the perpetrators, whoever they may be." Mr. Boutros-Ghali's special envoy, Trevor Gordon-Somers, had arrived in Liberia Wednesday before the statement was announced, and the Council urged all parties to cooperate with him to negotiate an end to the three-year civil war, which has left tens of thousands dead.
The statement was delayed a day because West African nations wanted a mention of Charles Taylor, head of the rebel group accused by witnesses and the Government of carrying out the killings.
Source: New York Times
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