.c The Associated Press

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) - Panicked, wounded civilians struggled Thursday to
flee one of the bloodiest outbreaks of fighting of a 3-year-old insurrection
in Liberia, as government forces battled what they said was a rebel attack on
Gbarnga, President Charles Taylor's central stronghold.

Whole towns and refugee camps were emptying. Thousands fled into the bush or
to the west and hoped-for safety in Monrovia, capital of the West African
nation.

``This is no time to bluff - life is what counts!'' fleeing 27-year-old James
Tenay said, scrambling into the trunk of a crowded taxi to escape Gbarnga.

He said Wednesday he was headed toward Monrovia, 150 miles away, ``to let my
family know that I am still alive.''

The attack on Taylor's base in the heart of the nation marked a dramatic
increase in hostilities between government forces and the shadowy rebels
fighting them.

At a Lutheran-run hospital on the outskirts of Gbarnga, medical workers
desperately sought vehicles to evacuate the injured. Many were women and
children suffering gunshot wounds.

The army pulled its wounded out of the hospital Wednesday. Many hospital
workers abandoned their posts soon after.

``For fear of their lives,'' explained Mary Teah, a nurse.

Around her, doctors struggled to treat a wailing 4-year-old boy. His flesh
hung in strips from an infected gunshot wound to the shoulder.

Dozens of women screamed in other wards. Some were in agony from what
hospital workers said were bullet wounds in the abdomen.

Rebels had been advancing on Gbarnga from at least two fronts late Wednesday.

Thursday, Taylor announced that the rebels had attacked the town at sunrise.
Fighting was continuing, he said.

In Monrovia, residents listened to the president's live broadcast on
hand-held radios.

``This country has a right to protect itself,'' Taylor declared on his own
Kiss FM station, adding, ``We must bring an end to this cycle of violence.''

Security forces on Thursday blocked journalists from returning to Gbarnga.
The fate of those at the hospital could not be learned.

Liberia, founded by freed U.S. slaves in the 19th century, has been locked in
poverty and insecurity since a 1989-96 civil war. More than 150,000 people
died in the civil war and 2.6 million were forced from their homes.

After leading the war in part from his military base at Gbarnga, Taylor, then
a rebel warlord, won the presidency in a post-conflict 1997 election.

Many of the fighters on both sides of the current conflict were combatants in
the civil war.

Taylor blames the losing factions in the old conflict for starting the new
one, and accuses neighboring Guinea of harboring the rebels.

Taylor, his government and military are under an arms embargo and other U.N.
sanctions for what the United Nations said this week was ongoing arms- and
diamond-running with rebels of neighboring Sierra Leone.

U.S.-based Human Rights Watch last week accused Taylor's forces of atrocities
in combatting the insurrection, including burning alive and shooting dozens
of civilians.

The U.S. rights group called the conflict a threat to overall security in
West Africa. It likewise urged the United States to condition its military
support to Guinea on an end to any support of the rebels.

Diplomats have privately accused Taylor of exaggerating the rebel threat in
hopes of seeing the arms embargo lifted. Some have accused Taylor of
masterminding the conflict as an excuse to cancel elections set for 2003.

Attempts by the Associated Press in neighboring Ivory Coast to reach the
rebels at their base in Europe were unsuccessful Thursday.

A BBC interview with one rebel spokesman, William Hanson, earlier in the week
degenerated quickly into indecipherable shouting by the rebel spokesman.

This attack, however, threatened Taylor's own base. He maintains a massive
plantation there. One of the war-scarred country's few good roads conveys
Mercedes back and forth from Monrovia to Gbarnga.

Panicked refugees Thursday said many civilians had been killed in the
fighting, but could give no numbers.

The international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres confirmed that 5,000
people had fled the town of Weinsu alone, leaving it empty.

Others in flight included many of the 15,000 people who had taken shelter at
U.N.-supervised camps outside Gbargna after escaping fighting in northern
Liberia's Lofa County last year.

``You see the town deserted because civilians are afraid, but this town will
not fall,'' a Liberian government fighter, a colonel, declared late Wednesday
in Gbarnga.

One of his commanders, Gen. Coucou Dennis, was camped out with a satellite
phone receiver in one hand, an imported beer in another. ``Welcome to my
base,'' he said.

Panicked refugees fled with mattresses and bundles on their heads, babies on
their backs, and oil lanterns in their hands.

``We are following the road. Wherever the night catches us, we will sleep
there,'' said one resident of the town, 47-year-old Musu Kollie said.

``But to remain in Gbarnga in the face of what we see is like giving your own
life away.''

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