LIBERIA: The sea of humanity surged across the bridges from dawn. It was a two-way flow hungry, homeless people crossing from both sides of the frontline, reuniting a city divided by war, writes Declan Walsh in Monrovia.
Gripping a mattress to his head, Soko Tarnua (24) pushed his way through the impatient throng. Empty bullet cases clinking at his feet, he could barely pause to talk.
"I'm going home to find something to eat. It's been weeks we couldn't get anything - no food, no water, no medicine," he said breathlessly before gathering his belongings and pressing forward.
If the punishing rebel siege sliced Monrovia in two, the dramatic arrival of Nigerian and US peacekeepers this week stitched the wounded city up again.
The catalyst was the departure of Charles Taylor, who flew into air-conditioned exile in Nigeria last Monday. At a sweaty departure ceremony at the city's executive mansion, Mr Taylor blamed his enemies, particularly the US, for his expulsion and compared his persecution to that of Jesus Christ. But before stepping off the stage, he hinted at a return appearance. "God willing, I will be back," he said.
Most Liberians hope not. He has left behind a shell of a country, decimated by 14 years of bloody strife. As the West African peacekeepers flood in, backed up by US marines and helicopter gunships, the international community is looking to piecing Liberia back together again. It is an awesome challenge.
The country is in an advanced state of collapse. The electricity supply broke down years ago and there is no running water. During the rainy season, raw sewage mixes with pools of water from broken sewers. Hospitals have been looted and destroyed. Fewer than one in five people can read or write. The economy has been decimated. Factories are burned out, warehouses looted.
International sanctions restrict sales of diamonds and timber. The government, which owes $1 billion to international institutions, has not paid civil servants in years. The main source of income is an ask-no-questions registry of foreign ships.
"This country is a tablua raza", said Jacques Klein, the cigar-chomping straight-talking UN special envoy in Monrovia yesterday. "The process of healing must begin now."
Mr Klein is spearheading international efforts to rebuild Liberia. Presuming a peace deal is struck soon, his office is hoping to resurrect the nation in the same way as neighbouring Sierra Leone. The operation will take will takes years, possibly decades, and cost hundreds of millions of euros.
The immediate priority is to save lives. The city of Monrovia will need food aid for at least the next three months, he said.
Yesterday the first World Food Programme ship sidled up the city docks and more are expected in coming days.
The seaside capital has a post-apocalyptic feel. Entire streets are lined with hollowed-out buildings, many abandoned for years. Grand-scale pillage accompanied the fighting, so warehouses are empty. Over a third of Liberia's population have crammed into the city centre. The hungriest ones have taken to eating snails, frogs and dogs.
The situation in the countryside could be worse, but nobody knows. Carolyn McAskie, the UN deputy humanitarian co-ordinator, admitted her information was limited to "50 per cent of Monrovia".
Even in the pockets of relative prosperity outside town, levels of suffering are high. Stomachs were rumbling at Cotton Tree, a trading centre on the edge of the vast Firestone rubber plantation, 40 miles from Monrovia. There are jobs - plantation workers are paid just under €2 a day - but war had left the market shelves bare.
"Sometimes you get the money, but still no food," said Amara Senessie, a welder at the Firestone plant.
Liberia though also has many assets. With just over three million people, it is not burdened with the overpopulation which blights many African countries and it is rich in resources. There are deep seams of diamonds, iron ore deposits and sprawling hardwood forests.
One of the first tasks, Mr Klein said yesterday, will be to figure out "who owns what". Then the bankrupt government must start paying civil servants and try to get schools up and running again.
Human reconstruction will be equally necessary. The stress of years of gun battles, shelling and intimidation has traumatised the nation. There is just one practising psychiatrist. Tens of thousands of drug-addled fighters, many of them children, will have to be disarmed and rehabilitated into society. It will be painful for their victims.
"We will forgive them but we will never forget," said Samantha Sawie, a Liberian Oxfam worker, as she passed by a truckload of departing militia fighters.
The fighters' leaders may also be held to account. Mr Taylor's exile deal with Nigeria was "probably the best solution to the problem", said Mr Klein.
Pressure is likely to mount for him to be extradited to Sierra Leone, where war crimes prosecutors want to try him for his part in atrocities there.
Rebel commanders may also pay for their deeds. Over the past two months, LURD rebels rained shells on crowded neighbourhoods, killing at least 2,000 people. If they were aiming at military target, they rarely hit them.
"Just because you're killing civilians now doesn't mean you won't be investigated," said Mr Klein. "The wheels of justice sometimes grind slowly, but they grind."
Much still depends on peace talks in nearby Ghana, where the new president, Mr Moses Blah, is meeting rebel leader Sekou Conneh this weekend. If a deal is hammered out, a transitional government could be in place by October. Then a large UN peacekeeping force will deploy, probably headed by Bangladeshi troops, and US and Nigerian peacekeepers could pull their troops out.
The last time a poll was held after a peace deal, in 1997, Liberians voted Mr Taylor into power, fearing a return to chaos if he lost. Nobody can afford for that to happen again.