THE UN said yesterday it would try again to deliver food supplies to more than 5,000 refugees and other displaced people in Monrovia after heavy fighting prevented a convoy from getting through a day before.
Separately, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr Jose Ayala Lasso, appealed to all parties in Liberia to restore peace and end violations of basic human rights.
The world body currently has 40 personnel in Liberia, including five military observers, according to a spokeswoman.
The UN refugee agency said it would try to send the convoy carrying two weeks' of food supplies to a Ministry of Health building in Monrovia where 5,000 Sierra Leonean refugees and displaced Liberians are sheltering.
Supplies will also be distributed to 75 Sierra Leonean refugee children staying at Vahun shelter, also in the capital, where fighting erupted on April 6th.
"We tried to send that convoy yesterday and it didn't get through. We'll try again today," UNHCR spokeswoman, Ms Ruth Marshall, said in Geneva.
"But there seem to be still extreme spasms of extreme violence in Monrovia with drunken rampages by military groups and armed gangs. So the security situation is still very tense."
In Washington yesterday, the State Department said around 30 US nationals were still missing in Liberia. A total of 1,826 people including 328 Americans have been evacuated from thee capital where factional fighting broke out on April 6th after police tried to arrest the ousted faction leader, "General" Roosevelt Johnson, on murder, charges.
The US is continuing diplomatic contacts to try to persuade the parties to return to the Abuja peace process that was reached in August, the State Department said.
Meanwhile, a boat carrying 23 people who fled Monrovia, including 14 Liberians and nine Sierra Leonean refugees, arrived, on Monday in Conakry, according to a report received from the UNHCR's office in Guinea. They have applied for refugee status.