Violence erupted in the towns of Voinjama and Zorzor in Liberia last week. There are conflicting reports about the cause of the conflict in which four people died. While the mainstream media reports seem to attribute the violence to religious tensions, blogger Johnny Dwyer argues that “Liberia is not a place fuming with religious tension. At least based on my experiences there.” The head of The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) Ellen Loj says that the clashes had ethnic undertones. Shelby Grossman says that the confusion in the media reports about the cause of the conflict seems to be “more about journalists trying to frame the story in a way that fits into people’s ideas about fighting in Africa.” Shelby Grossman is a first year graduate student in the Department of Government at Harvard University. She recently worked in Liberia and Nigeria. What was really the cause of the conflict that resulted in deaths and destruction of property? Ceasefire Liberia reports, “Violence rages in Lofa County”: The cities of Voinjama and Zorzor in Lofa County have been engulfed with violence resulting in the deaths of four people and the destruction of property, including the burning of churches, schools and a mosque. Lofa County is located in the north-western tip of Liberia and has several tribes and religions. It was also one of the hardest hit areas during the country’s 14 years of civil war. The incidence which occured Friday was sparked by the discovery of the body of an eleventh-grade female student named Korpu Kamara, who had gone missing for days and was found dead a few days later next to a mosque in Zorzor. As a result, dozens of students staged a protest as they suspected that their colleague’s death may have been carried out by the Muslims, a situation that turned the protest into religious violence that left many churches and Christian schools burned. The Superintendent of Lofa County, Galakpai Kortimai, told a local radio station Friday night that misinformation from Zorzor of a mosque being burnt down rapidly spread to Voinjama, which led angry Muslims to go on a rampage, reportedly burning down churches and Christian-run schools with the Catholic and Lutheran schools in the provincial capital being reportedly burnt down as well. Ceasefire Liberia is a blog bridge between the Liberian community in Liberia and the rest of the Diaspora. Its mission is to create a dialogue between Liberians who remained in the country during and after the war and those who fled. Shelby explores events that lead to deadly attacks on people and property: On Friday a woman was killed in Konia, a town in Lofa. I don’t know why. The woman was either 14 or 21. I think she was Loma and Christian, and I think her body was found near a mosque. The killing sparked revenge attacks between two ethnic groups in the region: Mandingo and Loma (aka Lorma). Attackers targeted people (including local political elite), mosques, and churches. UNMIL restored order (or, perhaps more likely, they showed up after things had settled down). Some are accusing UNMIL of siding with Mandingos (who are usually Muslim), as the UN peacekeepers in Lofa are mostly Pakistani. 4 people were killed and probably more than 14 wounded as a result of the clashes, mostly in Voinjama, the capital of Lofa. Simultaneously, taking advantage of the tension, maybe 60 people escaped from the Voinjama prison. Hundreds of people fled from Konia and Voinjama. (As Johnny explains, both towns were hit hard by Liberia’s war.) The confusion First, I can’t figure out the exact name of the town. It is alternatively spelled Konia, Kornia, and Konica. (Sometimes different spellings within the same article.) Also, based on 15 minutes of Google-ing, I can’t find the town on any map. As best I can tell it is on the main road in Lofa, about 55 miles in some direction from Voinjama. [Update: It's between Zorzor and Voinjama. Thanks Viktor.] These points of confusion are not insignificant, but more important is whether or not the fighting should be characterized as religious. Is Liberia sitting on a time bomb and that the violence was premeditated?: MONROVIA – A Lofa County Senator has proposed that the violence that took place in Lofa County over the weekend, leaving at least four persons dead and several others injured, was premeditated. On Tuesday, March 2, Sen.Sumo Kupee told the Senate Plenary, the highest decision-making body of the Upper House, that the mêlée, in which hundreds of people, including women and children, were displaced, had been planned by some individuals. The Lofa County Senator did not name the masterminds of the violence but called for an independent probe into the incident.