Heavy fighting flared in Liberia's besieged capital yesterday despite rebel declarations of a cease-fire, with President Charles Taylor's forces battling rebel pushes toward his downtown strong-hold amid gunfire and explosions.

　　Mortars crashed into neighborhoods of tin-roof shacks overnight, killing at least one person and injuring eight adults and a dozen children on the government side, aid workers said.

　　Government forces fired volleys of rocket-propelled grenades at the rebel-held port area.

　　"There is nothing like a cease-fire here," said Kate Wright, a resident who spent a sleepless night cowering in a basement-level business center with neighbors.

　　Others slept on city beaches, feeling safer in the soft sand than in their own homes.

　　Stray bullets from fighting near two bridges hit far into the capital, pinging into neighborhoods around the US Embassy, and scattering a crowd gathered there drawing water from a stream.

　　Liberian military chief General Benjamin Yeaten said rebels were attempting to cross into government-held central Monrovia, despite a pledge late on Tuesday to cease fighting and pull back to the port to await the arrival of a yet-to-materialize international peace force.

　　"The fighting is still heavy here," Yeaten said from his headquarters overlooking the bridges. "We are in fierce exchange of fire with enemy forces."

　　Insurgents have fought a three-year war to capture Monrovia and topple Taylor, a US-educated business student and Libyan-trained guerrilla fighter who launched Liberia into 14 years of near-perpetual conflict in 1989.

　　Liberia's main, northern-based rebel group has made three pushes into Liberia's capital, a city of 1 million peo-ple overflowing with hundreds of thousands of refugees.

　　Rebels are holding Monrovia's port, cutting off food and other vital aid for the hungry, disease-ridden capital.