CHURCHES throughout Monrovia were packed yesterday as the people prayed for salvation and relief from the bloody nightmare of civil war.

Their prayers may go some way to being answered today with the deployment of a West African peacekeeping force. More complete relief would come with the departure of President Taylor.

At St Peter’s Lutheran Church, Mr Taylor’s wife, Jewel, sat alongside her sister in the front row. Asked if she would be going with him into exile in Nigeria, she replied: “Certainly, it is a wife’s duty to go with her husband. Anyway, it has been a rough ride, and we all need some peace and rest.”

“Hallelujah, Glory Be,” one of the presiding priests shouted as the gospel choir broke into Lord, Let now thy servant depart in peace.

On Saturday, Mr Taylor — blamed by virtually everyone for the chaotic situation — said that he would step down from office on August 11. His departure is the key demand of the United States and the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), the rebel group, whose fighters are at the gates of this battered city.

As he spoke, Mr Taylor’s forces launched a big assault to try to retake the port area of the capital ahead of the peacekeepers’ arrival. Fighting flared again yesterday, but was much more subdued.

Despite his stated intentions, it is still not clear when Mr Taylor will leave the country and go into exile in Nigeria, a commitment dragged out of him to end a previous rebel offensive but which he seems most reluctant to honour. Throughout his career Mr Taylor has perfected the art of wriggling out of apparently hopeless situations. His people fear that he may try to do it again.

“What we are seeing is classic Taylor,” one regional analyst said. “He will try to prolong this as much as possible and stay in the background and manipulate events.”

Mr Taylor, a warlord turned President, has been indicted on war crimes by an international court investigating atrocities in neighbouring Sierra Leone. “Taylor wants the indictment lifted,” a Western diplomat said. “He wants to leave Liberia a free man. He is quite capable of spinning this out and playing a wrecking role.”

Most Liberians cannot wait to see the back of him and, with the prospect of a neutral force soon entering the city, are increasingly saying so.

“Nobody wants him to stay,” said Pastor Joseph Johnson, who buried Mr Taylor’s mother just three weeks ago. After the service, Mr Taylor’s bodyguards stole his car.

“I am afraid of what he is hoping to achieve if he decides to stay on,” he said. “He has people who are loyal to him and who are programmed to believe that if he is in the country and not President then it is not in the natural order of things.”

The advance force of approximately 300 Nigerian soldiers is due to arrive in Monrovia from Sierra Leone. They form the vanguard of a force that is expected finally to number more than 3,200 and have been promised American logistical support.

They are assured of a rapturous welcome. They will, in effect, be lifting a siege of the capital. Weeks of shelling and fighting has left hundreds of thousands of people without food, water or other basic amenities. Sanitary conditions are appalling. Disease is rampant. A tiny cup of rice that used to cost 10 Liberian dollars is now nearer 80 (almost £1) and way beyond the means of some of the poorest people in the world.

In the Masonic Hall, which overlooks two strategic bridges leading into Monrovia from the rebel-held suburbs, a woman held up a badly malnourished one-month old baby. “No food, no nothing here,” said the mother, Sano, who has been sheltering in the building with hundreds of other people for more than a month.

Every corner is occupied with people. It is almost impossible to move without stepping on a hand, foot or even sleeping, naked child.

Charity flies out supplies

A British flight to Liberia was being loaded with medical supplies, food and clothing last night at Manston airport in Kent. Save the Children UK privately chartered the Boeing DC8 to take 30 tonnes of supplies to people in Monrovia, where the charity has 60 Liberian staff.

Included in the £90,000 package are 8.5 tonnes of cholera and rehydration kits; 150 bales of baby clothes; plastic sheeting for shelters; five tonnes of high-energy biscuits; and 10,000 collapsible jerry cans. Thirty days of water-purification tablets will benefit 10,000 families.

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