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MONROVIA, Liberia - Armed U.N. troops arrested dozens Sunday in a sometimes bloody conclusion to a countrywide disarmament program, days after a fresh burst of violence in the war-battered West African nation.
In one neighborhood, about 80 men and boys lay on the ground surrounded by U.N. Ghanaian and Nigerian peacekeepers after one of several raids. Their ragged clothes were bloodstained and their wounds bleeding from what they said was the violence of their arrests.
U.N. forces said the men had been firing weapons and intimidating residents. Gunfire blasted across the area, at least some of it warning shots from U.N. peacekeepers sweeping sites for arms.
Bangladeshi U.N. troops searched vehicles for weapons at checkpoints across the capital, Monrovia, while Nigerian U.N. forces patrolled in vehicles with mounted machine guns.
Sunday was the deadline for civilians to surrender weapons under a U.N.-supported disarmament program, launched in December after the end of nearly 11/2 decades of civil wars.
The project collected guns from 90,000 ex-combatants, who gave up their weapons for $300 and access to U.N.-backed rehabilitation programs, according to U.N. figures.
Authorities promised prosecution for those found with weapons after Sunday.
Monrovia is still on edge after a surprise outbreak of Muslim-Christian fighting Friday, marking some of the worst violence since last year's peace.
The confirmed death toll in Friday's fighting remained at five, with five churches and an undetermined number of mosques burned. The U.N. mission on Sunday denied police accounts that three of the victims died when they were run over by a U.N. armored personnel carrier.
It was unclear what sparked the mayhem. Religious violence is rare in Liberia, a nation founded in the 1800s by freed American slaves where about 40 percent of the 3.3-million people are Christians and 20 percent are Muslims.
A 15,000-strong U.N. peace force is now stationed in the country, which is expected to hold elections in October 2005.