The United Nations mission in Liberia will expel five peacekeepers after a fight in the capital Monrovia this month which ended in shooting that panicked local residents, a spokesman said on Thursday. The men are due to be deported quickly in one of the toughest disciplinary measures adopted by the 15,000-strong U.N. mission, rocked by sexual abuse allegations last year. Inhabitants of Monrovia's poor Sinkor neighbourhood, where the fight occurred two weeks ago, identified the soldiers as Nigerians, but the U.N. spokesman declined to comment. "We are not going to delay at all in sending them back to their home country. This should tell the rest of the people that we cannot condone such an ugly act," Ben Dotsei Malor, U.N. spokesman in Liberia, told Reuters by telephone. The massive U.N. contingent in Liberia was mandated to oversee the reconstruction of the West African country after 14 years of on-off civil war, which killed 250,000 people, ended in 2002 with the exile of warlord Charles Taylor. According to a U.N. inquiry made public on Thursday, the fist fight had broken out on Sept. 17 between two peacekeepers over the pronunciation of an African name.
