CRI听力:Ebola Clampdown Raises Concerns

Liberian security forces stand in front of protesters after clashes at West Point neighbourhood in Monrovia, August 20, 2014. [Photo:CFP]

Clashes have erupted in an Ebola quarantine zone in Liberia's capital, Monrovia.

Police have used tear gas on the crowd while trying to evacuate a state official from the quarantine zone.

The violence comes as the death toll from Ebola approaches 14-hundred in West Africa.

CRI's Xiong Siqi has more.

Reporter:
Liberia's Minister of National Defense is refuting suggestions of heavy-handedness, saying the armed forces have not been issued any shoot-to-kill orders.

The suggestion has been made after hundreds of residents clashed with riot police, who used barbed wire to seal off some 50-thousand people inside a shanty town to contain the current Ebola outbreak gripping Liberia.

Four people have been injured in the clashes in the West Point area of the capital.

Police have fired live rounds and tear gas to try to disperse the crowd.

Brownie Samukai is Liberia's Minister of National Defense.

"Those soldiers are under orders from this point. No decision on the use of those weapons against any person can be issued without clearer instructions from the Commander in Chief to the Minister of Defence and through the chain of command of the Armed Forces of Liberia. Once again I want to make it very clear, that the Armed Forces of Liberia has not been issued any orders of shoot to kill anybody out there at this point in time."

Liberian authorities have brought in nationwide curfew this week and put the West Point area under quarantine to curb the spread of the Ebola virus.

Those inside the zone have reacted with fury to the crackdown, hurling stones and insults at the security forces.

"There are people who left from Duala and other places to check on their goods in Waterside yesterday. They were not able to come home; they are still in West Point. Why are you ill-treating people like this?"

The West Point shanty town has been a flash point in the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia.

Over the weekend, a screening center was ransacked, with locals accusing the government of bringing sick people to their neighborhood.

Attempts to isolate the affected areas have also sparked fears about food and medical supply shortages.

In an effort to ease tensions, Liberian authorities have started delivering rice, oil and other foodstuffs to the area.

The country, with an Ebola death toll approaching 500, is the worst-hit among the four West African countries currently dealing with Ebola.

Meanwhile, authorities in Nigeria have confirmed a senior doctor who treated the country's first known Ebola patient has died of the virus.

That brings the death toll in Africa's most populous country to five.

But all of Nigeria's reported cases have been people who have direct contact with a man who was originally infected when he arrived in the country.

As the virus spreads, health officials with the United Nations are reporting encouraging signs in Guinea that the outbreak is slowing.

In East Africa, Kenyan authorities are rejecting reports which have suggested over 200 people from Ebola-hit countries have snuck into the country through its border with Uganda.

Kenyan officials insist the country's borders are secure.

For CRI, I'm Xiong Siqi .