Over 100 Liberian Refugees Repatriated

More than 100 Liberian refugees who fled fighting in Ivory Coast were flown home on Thursday after being stranded for more than week on a cargo ship in neighbouring Ghana.

The 117 refugees, including 35 women and 45 children, said they paid a Liberian middleman for the three-day trip to Liberia's capital Monrovia, but the ship's captain refused to sail with so many passengers on board.

The refugees said they had moved to Ivory Coast after escaping fighting in their own country.

"We want West Africa to prosper, we want peace in the region. We want them to go home safely," Ghana's Interior Minister Kwame Addo Kufuor told Reuters, shortly after a charter plane taking the refugees to Monrovia took off on Thursday.

UNHCR officials were not immediately available for comment.

The Liberians, spending their eighth day on the boat on Thursday, had said they were running out of provisions but would not leave the ship unless they were offered another way home.

"We're running out of food and water. We have only dry gari (cassava grits). But we can't leave the boat because we've paid a lot of money," Roselydia Brown, 32, said.

She had left her sister in Ivory Coast and was travelling with nine young children.

Liberia's seven-year civil war ended in 1996 but rebels took up arms again a few years later and there are still regular clashes. Tens of thousands of Liberians also fled to Ghana.

Ivory Coast was long seen as an oasis of calm in a troubled region and tens of thousands of Liberians came to live in the world's biggest cocoa grower along with refugees from Sierra Leone, it too ravaged by civil war in the 1990s.

However a failed coup on September 19 plunged Ivory Coast into its own civil war. Hundreds have been killed in fighting and three rebel factions now control much of the north.

More than 100 Liberian refugees who fled fighting in Ivory Coast were flown home on Thursday after being stranded for more than week on a cargo ship in neighbouring Ghana.

The 117 refugees, including 35 women and 45 children, said they paid a Liberian middleman for the three-day trip to Liberia's capital Monrovia, but the ship's captain refused to sail with so many passengers on board.

The refugees said they had moved to Ivory Coast after escaping fighting in their own country.

"We want West Africa to prosper, we want peace in the region. We want them to go home safely," Ghana's Interior Minister Kwame Addo Kufuor told Reuters, shortly after a charter plane taking the refugees to Monrovia took off on Thursday.

UNHCR officials were not immediately available for comment.

The Liberians, spending their eighth day on the boat on Thursday, had said they were running out of provisions but would not leave the ship unless they were offered another way home.

"We're running out of food and water. We have only dry gari (cassava grits). But we can't leave the boat because we've paid a lot of money," Roselydia Brown, 32, said.

She had left her sister in Ivory Coast and was travelling with nine young children.

Liberia's seven-year civil war ended in 1996 but rebels took up arms again a few years later and there are still regular clashes. Tens of thousands of Liberians also fled to Ghana.

Ivory Coast was long seen as an oasis of calm in a troubled region and tens of thousands of Liberians came to live in the world's biggest cocoa grower along with refugees from Sierra Leone, it too ravaged by civil war in the 1990s.

However a failed coup on September 19 plunged Ivory Coast into its own civil war. Hundreds have been killed in fighting and three rebel factions now control much of the north.