Rebel leader Prince Johnson of the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia surrendered to peacekeeping troops as fighting continued driving thousands of people into downtown Monrovia, officials and news reports said.
Johnson gave himself up Wednesday to the West African Peacekeeping Force, ECOMOG, after his Caldwell base camp, 10 miles west of Monrovia, was captured by Charles Taylor's rival National Patriotic Front of Liberia, which had been besieging Caldwell for the past three days, sources said.Separately, a diplomatic source said most remaining U.S. embassy workers were planning to leave the capital Thursday as NPFL forces continued to move on the city.
"Taylor is performing the actions of a man who wants to take over Liberia," the source, who declined to be named, told UPI by telephone. "The U.S. staff are planning to get out by plane Thursday. I don't know if they're taking the flag down, but they're locking the door."
In Washington, State Department press officer Julie Reside said the United States was not planning to close its embassy in Monrovia.
She said the already-reduced embassy staff would be cut from 46 to 20 people, which includes dependents. The administration was not planning to evacuate the embassy personnel or the 600 Americans in Liberia, she said.