Jeff Koinange: Trails of blood in Liberia
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CNN's Jeff Koinange
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Liberians stack corpses outside the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia in protest.
President Bush hasn't decided whether to commit peacekeepers.
CNN's Jeff Koinange visits the Liberian front lines.
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MONROVIA, Liberia (CNN) -- There is mounting pressure on the Bush administration to send peacekeeping troops to Liberia after an explosion of violence in the country.
CNN Correspondent Jeff Koinange has the latest Tuesday from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
KOINANGE: Mortar shells are still falling thick and fast. Earlier [Tuesday], the CNN crew ventured for the first time into downtown Monrovia to see for ourselves the extent of the damage and destruction.
Along the way we could see the streets were completely deserted. We saw where mortar shells had landed and completely devastated buildings. One had landed probably where people had been huddling, and we could see trails of blood all over the pavement.
As we were filming, we did run into the Liberian defense minister, Daniel Chea, outside his office.
We got a chance to speak to him and asked him about morale. He told us morale was pretty high, but he insisted on, pleaded for, the U.S. government and the U.N. to lift the arms embargo on Liberia if they are not sending in peacekeepers any time soon.
He said [Liberian government forces] could take care of the problem themselves but they have run out of ammunition, they have run out of most of their firepower.
He laid the blame solely at the door of the rebels for this latest mortar firing. He said the government troops do not have mortar shells in their arsenal. What they do have is small arms mostly.
In the meantime, Liberians continue to flee. We hear the death toll has risen to upward of 600. The hospitals are jam-packed, with hundreds of patients being treated overnight and more are still coming in.
The situation on the ground is pretty deplorable right now. You can just imagine what locally displaced Liberians are going through -- complete, utter devastation.
In the words of one Liberian, the entire city is in a state of paralysis.
