More than a quarter million people have evacuated Sinoe County in the Southeast of Liberia, where a new rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, has recently launched an incursion.

Tens of thousands of the people of Sinoe continue to leave the county in fear of their lives. Some Sinoe citizens in Monrovia have begun to send cars for their relations. Many more who cannot afford the increased transportation fees are walking towards Monrovia where hundreds of Sinoe residents arrive daily. According to reports, armed men are stationed at checkpoints along the roads to prevent able-bodied men from leaving the county in an apparent bid to conscript them.

An elderly Sinoe citizen said although the war has not reached many parts of the County, the citizens choose to leave early enough to save themselves from the cruelty of gun men, who he said have begun to loot the deserted towns of Sinoe.

The first round of fighting in the county (1989 -1997) took the form of the Rwanda conflict, where the two major tribes engaged one another in retributive attacks. The Sarpo and Krus were at one another's throat, torching villages and towns and killing indiscriminately.

Most of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) are from the Kru ethnic group who suspect that the new armed faction operating in the Southeast may be predominantly Sarpo and Krahn elements with whom they had a barbarous feud in the 1990s.