By Jan Hennop and Emmanuel Goujon
Monrovia - Thousands of Liberians looted food Tuesday from Monrovia's port, a day before rebels were due to hand the area over to aid workers eager to feed the starving city.
The pillaging coincided with the arrival of a UN ship stocked with food and medicines, which was anchored off the coast.
Mobs ransacked warehouses in the port, controlled by the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel group for weeks, and left with sacks of maize and other staple foods on their heads, an AFP reporter saw.
The looting started with thousands in the morning but by noon (12h00 GMT) the number of civilian ransackers had slimmed down to a few hundred.
Ezekia Sayde, a 17-year-old who was carrying a sack of maize, said: "I am taking this bag because I am too hungry."
LURD deputy secretary general Sekou Fofana said he had taken steps to stop the vandalism and issued a stern warning.
"Civilians are taking the food of their own free will. We are against that. They are entering the backyard of the port at their own risk," he told AFP.
"We have now deployed security there, which will stay there until 12:00 tomorrow afternoon, when we will hand over the Bushrod Island and the port to peacekeeping force," he added.
In the afternoon, heavily armed rebels, including women fighters, patrolled the port with AK-47 assault rifles.
UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Carolyn McAskie meanwhile said a UN ship stocked with food and medicines had anchored off the coast and was "ready to move in".
The vessel is the first humanitarian supply ship to arrive in Monrovia since UN international workers pulled out of the city amid heavy fighting in June.
"On board the ship there are some foodstuffs like high-energy biscuits and some medicines," McAskie said.
"The ship will also provide security for our staff and sleeps 27 people and the crew," she said.
Two days after the resignation and departure of former president Charles Taylor, the central figure in the country's 14 years of almost uninterrupted war, the focus shifted to the plight of Liberia's civilians.
They face a crippling shortage of food, medicines and drinking water. Thousands are crammed into filthy makeshift shelters, where disease has run rampant during Monrovia's two-month siege.
Only one hospital in the city has a functional surgical ward, and it is almost full to capacity.
An uneasy calm prevailed over Liberia on Wednesday with the commander of the west African ECOMIL peacekeeping force, General Festus Okonkwo, saying: "There have been no reports of fighting overnight. Everything is quiet at the moment."
He said there had been clashes earlier in the second port city of Buchanan between pro-government forces and rebels from MODEL (Movement for Democracy in Liberia), a smaller insurgent movement.
ECOMIL peacekeepers were despatched towards Buchanan in response to a request from MODEL, who said it had been attacked first.
However, the LURD main rebel group on Wednesday reiterated its opposition to the new President Moses Blah, who took charge from Taylor as the head of a caretaker administration.
"We want our leader Sekou Damate Conneh to lead the interim government," LURD deputy secretary Fofana said, adding that Blah, Taylor's former deputy, was too closely identified with the former leader.
Taylor, indicted by a UN-backed court in Freetown for war crimes committed during Sierra Leone's civil war, arrived early on Tuesday in the south-eastern Nigerian city of Calabar to begin a new life in exile.
But the Freetown court Tuesday said Taylor "left Liberia as an indicted war criminal and remains an indicted war criminal" - a call which was backed up by the United States.
But on Wednesday, Africa's military powerhouse Nigeria, which has offered Taylor asylum, said it would not bow to any pressure over the matter.
"Nigeria will not be harassed by anybody about the indictment, and that is final," Foreign Minister Olu Adeniji told reporters who asked about a White House statement saying Taylor should be brought to trial.
"The United States has not contacted the Nigerian government because it understands why the Nigerian government did what it did," he said. - Sapa-AFP