MONROVIA (AFP) - The Liberian capital Monrovia was under curfew after citywide riots killed at least five people two days before the end of a UN disarmament effort, provoking fears of a return to conflict in the west African state.
"They can cut out my heart and this will not stop the fighting," said one youth, blood trickling from a cut on his face, a knife tucked into his belt.
"War is coming back to Liberia."
Rioting started late Thursday in the densely-populated Paynesville district, punctuated by automatic gunfire as it spread through Monrovia.
Churches, mosques and religious schools were set ablaze by rioters who also upended and torched cars. Looting was rampant.
"What happened in the country today is not an accident," government chairman Gyude Bryant said in a radio address.
"We have credible intelligence that it was planned, organized and financed by evil forces who do not want to see an end to the disarmament and the success of the peace process."
National police chief Chris Massaquoi said perpetrators of Friday's violence, which left dozens of people injured, burned or with bullet wounds, were "exploiting" ethnic tensions, which he said were not the root cause of the unrest.
"There was nothing ethnic about it," he said. "It was people who were trying to exploit the prospect of destabilizing the peace process in Liberia."
An AFP correspondent saw the bodies of three people run over by UN tanks that were trying to disperse the crowds in Paynesville, and of two people felled by bullets. Local media reported that two people were killed Thursday by a vehicle attempting to flee the violence.
Lieutenant Colonel Brendan Geraghty, a military spokesman for the UN mission in Liberia (UNMIL) said he had seen photographs of three of Friday's victims and heard reports of five fatalities, but denied that UN vehicles were responsible for any of the deaths.
Massaquoi told AFP earlier that while Liberia's joint security forces were not pointing fingers, "there are lots of ex-combattants with arms who have not yet disarmed so we cannot rule them out."
Monrovia is the largest of Liberia's cities teeming with former fighters from the civil wars that have raged almost unabated in the west African state since 1989.
The United Nations is due to wrap up its campaign to disarm them on Sunday after registering more than 87,000 people associated with three warring factions from the conflict begun in 1999 and declared over in August of last year.
But only 26,000 weapons have been collected, evoking concerns that thousands of arms and heavy artillery remain unaccounted for.
Former fighters have also complained that they have yet to receive promised benefits and have threatened reprisals should UNMIL fail to deliver.
Dozens of men armed with AK-47s were seen circulating in Paynesville, residents told AFP.
The failure of the disarmament program following Liberia's first civil war, which ended in 1997 with the election of Charles Taylor, is considered a root cause of the second war.
Nigerian peacekeepers roamed the downtown area, firing in the air to scatter the few people still out in the rainy streets beyond the curfew imposed at 1400 GMT.
UN special envoy Jacques Klein warned of consequences should anyone be caught creating a disturbance on Friday night.
"Don't even try it," he scolded in a radio address that announced the arrests of 168 people.
"You will have no future in the police or in the army. You will have destroyed your future."
10/29/2004 - 20:30 GMT - AFP