2 Rebel Forces Advance Against Doe in Liberia

MONROVIA, Liberia —  Competing Liberian rebel groups advanced on two fronts against President Samuel K. Doe’s executive mansion Friday, and one group claimed it narrowly missed killing him in an ambush.

Rebels led by Prince Johnson fortified positions in Monrovia’s city center while men under command of his rival, Charles Taylor, advanced in the capital’s eastern suburbs.

Both groups were maneuvering in a last-ditch bid to topple Doe before West African peacekeepers arrive to impose a cease-fire.

Johnson claimed his men narrowly missed assassinating Doe on Thursday when they ambushed his car less than a mile from the mansion, the report said.

“I saw Doe with my own eyes,” said a rebel who gave his name as Battlefield. He said he fired at Doe’s blue Peugeot near the Defense Ministry.

Doe on Thursday accused U.S. Marines of trying to assassinate him, but the State Department in Washington denied the charge.

Journalists saw Taylor’s soldiers push through Monrovia’s eastern suburbs toward the fortress-like mansion where the besieged president is clinging to power.

Johnson also was quoted as saying his men had beaten back an attack by 100 Taylor rebels on his rear flank near Monrovia Free Port.

“If Taylor brings 50 million men, I don’t care,” Johnson said. “If they are not tactically trained, they run away.”

Taylor, whose 10,000 fighters represent the largest army in the country, is opposed to intervention by the West African force.

The peacekeepers, meanwhile, were mobilizing in five countries. They planned to sail into Monrovia from neighboring Sierra Leone, but no date for their arrival has been announced. Nigerian forces were expected to leave for Sierra Leone today.

In Monrovia’s Congo Town suburb on Friday, two rockets hit St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital, according to a radio communication from relief workers. It was not known if anyone was hurt.

More than 100 ambulatory patients fled the hospital, according to a spokesman for a European relief agency.

Doctors in Monrovia said Taylor has ordered everyone to leave the hospital.