For 2 days, uncertainty reigned as unpleasant memories of the violent war years rekindled.  Lives and property became expandable and cheap again as mobs emerged around the city with vengeance, commandeering vehicles and holding residents hostage in restricting their freedom of movement.

Initial estimates of vehicles burnt or destroyed run into over US300,000, according to police. Cost of destruction of public buildings could be higher, police say.

Monrovia was at their mercy as they roamed almost undeterred and unchallenged.  Despite the rioting a day earlier, the police and other state security structures were unprepared for the mayhem that befell the city, leaving its 1.2m inhabitants with a senseless helplessness, as marauding gangs became lords unchallenged.

A city with virtually no outlets soon fell to the roaming mobs. The numerical strength of the mobs, operating under the convenient label of ‘vacation students’, made any police intervention seem futile. War times scenes emerged, with young men back into their rebel attires-tying their heads with shirts and wielding machetes in the absence of guns.

Along the Tubman Boulevard, roadblocks, better known by their war nomenclature as ‘checkpoints, emerged. Soon they sprang upon other parts of the city.

Around Congotown, gangs at a checkpoint operated an extortion scheme reminiscent of the war, forcibly collecting LD 10 for motorbikes and LD20 from cars to let them through.

Some Chinese workers or entrepreneurs were amongst those hauled from their cars in other parts of the city. Several unlucky individuals had their cars smashed and set ablaze. The gangs burnt car tires on main roads, sending flames into the air.

One Ministry of Finance employees’ bus was set ablaze, along with a Liberia Football Association bus.

State building and properties became special targets. The mobs entered the Ministry of Finance and ransacked it as helpless employees looked.

Another gang smashed windows of the Ministry of Public Works while others vandalized the newly renovated Antoinette Tubman Stadium, the cherished venue for sports events in central Monrovia.

The mayhem was clearly a protest against delayed payment for 2 weeks of community work including street sweeping and cutting of grass in neighborhoods.

Mr. Acarious Gray, Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) secretary general, was spotted on top of a party marked jeep with loud speakers and distributing water or money. He and other members of his party had weeks earlier vowed a ‘bitter Liberia, ungovernable Liberia.” It seemed they were now delivering on their threats.

If the government had underestimated the severity of the problem, there was a rethink as it became obvious that vacation students hired were now massively infiltrated.

As the violence spread, the government began to see the gravity of the mayhem. A 10 to 6 curfew was declared, with the police, enfeebled over the months with human rights rituals, patrolled the streets together with UNMIL.

“We coming are,” some young men in Sinkor shouted as they patrolled, convinced of no repercussions.