Five Liberians killed, dozens injured in pre-election violence

[News_Editor]

Five Liberians killed, dozens injured in pre-election violence

2011-11-08 08:54:00 GMT+7 (ICT)

MONROVIA (BNO NEWS) -- At least five people were killed on Monday and dozens more were injured when violence broke out during an opposition rally in the Liberian capital of Monrovia ahead of the country's presidential run-off, local media reported.

The violence broke out at the headquarters of the main opposition party, the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), which had called for a peaceful vigil to urge their supporters to boycott Tuesday's polls. At least five people were killed and more than 25 injured after shots were reportedly fired, the Liberia Journal reported.

The identities of the victims were not immediately revealed. But according to initial reports, Liberian security forces began firing in the air after they barricaded the main entries to the opposition facility.

However, an official of the ruling Unity Party, speaking on condition of anonymity, blamed the CDC for creating the conditions which sparked the violence. Samuel D. Tweah, a CDC official, said his group was attacked in violation of its constitutional right to peacefully assemble.

"Because they thought CDC partisans have no rights to peacefully assemble, they decided to attack us," Tweah told The Liberian Journal in an interview from CDC's headquarters in Monrovia. "There is no need to deploy security forces when people are gathering peacefully."

Incumbent President Johnson Sirleaf won the initial October election, but failed to pass the 50 percent threshold to avoid a run-off. Nearly 1.8 million people had registered to vote in the elections, which came just days after 72-year-old Sirleaf, who is Africa's first democratically elected female president, won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her work to improve women's rights.

The previous elections in 2005 were managed by the United Nations, but this year's polls have been organized by the country's National Elections Commission. Tuesday's polls mark Liberia's second democratic elections since the end of the decade-long conflict that killed nearly 150,000 people, mostly civilians, and sent 850,000 others fleeing to neighboring countries.

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