MONROVIA, Liberia -- Hundreds of residents of a seaside slum in Liberia's capital clashed with security forces Wednesday to protest an armed blockade of the peninsula that is their neighbourhood as part of the government's desperate efforts to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus.
Protests began in the morning when roads into and out of West Point were blocked by riot police and troops and a coast guard boat patrolled the waters offshore.
When the local government representative, who had not slept at home, returned to get her family out, hundreds of people surrounded her house until police and soldiers packed her and her family into a car and hustled them away. Security forces fired into the air to disperse the crowd, and residents threw stones or whatever was at hand at them. At least one person was injured.
Deputy Police Chief Abraham Kromah said later Wednesday that forces managed to restore order in the area. He said the police were investigating whether any shots had been fired.
Fear and tension have been building in Monrovia for days, and West Point has been one of the flash points. West Point residents raided an Ebola screening centre over the weekend, accusing officials of bringing sick people from all over Monrovia into their neighbourhood. The move to seal off the densely populated, impoverished peninsula shows that the government is struggling to contain a deadly outbreak that is spreading faster in Liberia than anywhere else.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf ordered West Point sealed off and imposed a nationwide curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
"We have been unable to control the spread" of Ebola, Sirleaf said in an address to the nation Tuesday night. She blamed the rising case toll on denial, defiance of authorities and cultural burial practices, in which bodies are handled. But many feel the government has not done enough to protect them from the spread of Ebola.
The Ebola outbreak, which according to the World Health Organization began in December, has killed at least 1,229 people in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
On Wednesday, riot police and soldiers created roadblocks out of piles of scrap wood and barbed wire to prevent anyone from entering or leaving West Point, which occupies a kilometre-long peninsula where the Mesurado River meets the Atlantic Ocean.
Few roads go into the area and a major road runs along the base of the point, serving as a barrier between the neighbourhood and the rest of Monrovia. Ferries to the area have been halted.
At least 50,000 people live in West Point, one of the poorest and most densely populated neighbourhoods of the capital. Sanitation is poor even in the best of times and defecation in the streets and beaches is a major problem. Mistrust of authorities is rampant in this poorly served area, where many people live without electricity or access to clean water.
The community is in "disarray" following the arrival of forces on Wednesday morning, West Point resident, Richard Kieh, told The Associated Press by phone.
"Prices of things have been doubled here," he said.
The Ebola outbreak has already touched other parts of the capital, where dead bodies have lain in the streets for hours, sometimes days, even though residents asked that they be picked up by Health Ministry workers.
Liberia has the highest death toll, and its number of cases is rising the fastest. Sirleaf also ordered gathering places like movie theatres and night clubs shut and cordoned off Dolo Town, 50 kilometres south of the capital.
While whole counties and districts in Sierra Leone and Liberia have been sealed off and internal travel restrictions have limited the movement of people in Guinea, the sealing off of West Point is the first time such restrictions have been put in place in a capital city in this outbreak.
The current Ebola outbreak is currently the most severe in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but the UN health agency said that there were encouraging signs that the tide was beginning to turn in Guinea. There is also hope that Nigeria has managed to contain the disease to about a dozen cases.
Nigeria's health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said Tuesday that a fifth person had died of the disease in that country. All of Nigeria's reported cases so far have been people who had direct contact with a Liberian-American man who was already infected when he arrived in the country on an airliner.
Associated Press photographer Abbas Dulleh in Monrovia, Liberia, and writer Maram Mazen in Lagos, Nigeria, contributed to this report.
