Fighting rages as Liberians forage for food

Rebels thrust along a main road on the route to the airport but government forces pushed the insurgents back and the fighting quietened somewhat under pelting rain.

People set buckets, bowls and cups under tin roofs to collect pouring rain for drinking. Food was harder to get -- people scraped whatever they could from makeshift markets.

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Earlier, bursts of heavy gunfire echoed around two bridges at the threshold of the city centre after rebels rejected a U.S. call to pull out immediately so peacekeepers could deploy.

"We managed to hold them off at the bridge and push them back," army chief of staff General Benjamin Yeaten told Reuters.

The rebels of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) have been battling inside the city limits for 10 days to oust Taylor, a former warlord who has agreed, under U.S. pressure, to quit if peacekeepers come.

West African officials began meeting in Ghana's capital Accra on Monday with the Nigerian head of a planned peacekeeping force, Brigadier-General Festus Okonkwo, and U.S. military experts to finalise plans to send in troops.

The top official of West Africa's regional bloc ECOWAS has said troops will arrive this week but not date has yet been set. West African leaders have pledged to deploy some 1,300 Nigerian soldiers as the vanguard force of a larger mission.

The government says 1,000 civilians have been killed in the latest attack on a city battered by 14 years of violence. Among the dead are scores of civilians, killed when mortars slammed into the flimsy buildings where they were sheltering.

On Sunday, at least 14 people were killed as fighting raged, but by the end of the day the front line had changed little.

Aid workers said there were no reports of starvation, but hunger was growing. The traditional staple of green leaf sauce with rice has often become little more than the sauce.