Ebola: Shoot Illegal Immigrants On Sight; Liberia Orders Armed Forces

Liberia’s armed forces have reportedly been given orders to shoot people trying to illegally cross the border from neighbouring Sierra Leone, which was closed to stem the spread of Ebola.

Soldiers stationed in Bomi and Grand Cape Mount counties, which border Sierra Leone, were to “shoot on sight” any person trying to cross the border, said deputy chief of staff, Colonel Eric Dennis, The Daily Observer reported.
The order comes after border officials reported people continued to cross the porous border illegally.
Grand Cape Mount county had 35 known “illegal entry points,” according to immigration commander Colonel Samuel Mulbah.
Illegal crossings were a major health threat, said Mulbah, “because we don’t know the health status of those who cross at night”.
Liberia closed its borders with Sierra Leone weeks ago in an attempt to contain the Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 1100 people in west Africa so far.
The country has its own troubles in the bid to curtail the continued spread of the virus as they search for 17 Ebola patients who fled an attack on a quarantine centre in Monrovia, raising fears they could spread the deadly disease.
“We have not yet found them,” Information Minister Lewis Brown said on Monday, adding that “those who looted the place took away mattresses and bedding that were soaked with fluids from the patients.”
On Saturday youths wielding clubs and knives raided the medical facility set up in a high school in the dense-populated West Point slum, some shouting “there’s no Ebola”, echoing wild rumours that the epidemic has been made up by the West to oppress Africans.
Authorities are now considering sealing off the area, home to around 75,000 people, although some reports suggest the infected patients may have already fled West Point.
“All those hooligans who looted the centre are all now probable carriers of the disease,” said Brown, the spokesman for President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
“To quarantine the area could be one of the solutions. We run the risk of facing a difficult to control situation,” he warned.
Some Liberians believe the Ebola outbreak was a ploy by government to secure foreign aid, the Daily Observer reported. Liberians also criticise government for not providing sufficient services to Ebola patients, including health care, food and safe burials.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that a “massive scaling up of the international response” is necessary to get the outbreak under control.
By August 15, 2127 cases and 1145 deaths were reported from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.