A Liberian Army soldier beats a local resident while enforcing an Ebola quarantine in Monrovia. Photo: Getty Images
Monrovia: Liberia’s halting efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak spreading across parts of West Africa quickly turned violent on Wednesday when angry young men hurled rocks and stormed barbed-wire barricades, trying to break out of a neighbourhood that had been cordoned off by the government.
Soldiers repelled the surging crowd with live rounds, driving hundreds of young men back into the neighbourhood, a slum of tens of thousands in Monrovia known as West Point.
One teenager in the crowd, Shakie Kamara, 15, lay on the ground near the barricade, his right leg apparently wounded by a bullet from the melee. “Help me,” pleaded Kamara, who was barefoot and wore a green Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt.
A soldier chases a resident of a slum of 75,000 people who woke up to find themselves under quarantine. Photo: Getty Images
Lieutenant-Colonel Abraham Kromah, the national police’s head of operations, arrived a few minutes later.