SLAUGHTER IN THE STREETS

Relief workers stationed in Liberia are accustomed to their share of danger, but last week even they had seen enough. As the capital, Monrovia, was engulfed in the worst round of terror in six years, relief workers huddled around two-way radios waiting for news of an evacuation. During lulls in the shooting, those who could made their way to the U.S. embassy. On Tuesday the first U.S. MH-53 helicopter finally appeared over the horizon. "Soldiers threatened to rape our children," said Brian Johnson of World Relief after touching down in neighboring Sierra Leone. "I feel very good to be out."

Liberia's latest spasm of fighting began earlier this month. Leaders of the country's two main warring factions--who, following a peace agreement last August, had formed a new ruling council in Monrovia--announced their intention to arrest one of their own council members, Roosevelt Johnson. His followers responded by spilling into the streets, blowing up two helicopters recently donated by the U.S. and seizing hundreds of hostages, including, reportedly, at least 20 peacekeepers. Holed up in an old military base, they exchanged fire with opposing militiamen.

With that, Monrovia descended into anarchy. Militiamen and free-lance thieves, many of them children, rampaged through the streets, shooting their way into abandoned stores and looting at will. Those who resisted were killed. Bloated bodies lay rotting on empty avenues.

By week's end U.S. helicopters had ferried more than 1,000 foreigners to neighboring countries. To step up the rescue operation, the Pentagon dispatched some 4,000 troops, including Marines, from the Mediterranean to the West African coast aboard a five-ship flotilla. The mission, however, is limited to evacuating Americans and other foreigners. Liberians have no exit from the ring of hell that surrounds them.