Sierra Leone Civil War Turns Quiet Town Into Smoky Grave

House after house stands empty. Ashes swirl from blackened windows of adobe huts torched by rebels who shot anyone who moved, doused personal belongings with gasoline and tossed a match.

Spent machine-gun shells and rocket shrapnel litter the scorched ground along with evidence of shattered lives--an aluminum cooking pot, a broken stool, a small pink sandal.

Flies swarm around charred, headless corpses of rebel fighters killed by pro-government militiamen, then mutilated and burned on the edge of town. The sickly sweet smell of decaying bodies hangs in the air.

Just a few weeks ago, Tokpombu was a quiet hilltop community where 1,500 people toiled together, eking a living growing rice and cassava or toiling in diamond mines now abandoned--about 30 miles away.

Then it fell victim to a 7-year-old civil war that has visited atrocities on many villages in this lush West African country.

Witnesses say rebel fighters attacked Tokpombu in the heat of a September day, when most able-bodied men were away tending the fields.

Within an hour, the attackers had killed at least a dozen civilians and caused the rest to flee. In quick fashion, they plundered and burned most of Tokpombu’s 250 or so mud-brick houses.

The insurgents were still looting when a unit of the Kamajor militia stumbled across the slaughter during a routine patrol.

“We drove them out and killed about 50 of them,” said Alicious Koroma, a Kamajor officer raised in Tokpombu, pointing to the incinerated bodies on the edge of town. “We do not bury the rebels. In fact, we cut their heads off and burn their bodies.”

Although the Kamajors have promised protection, Tokpombu’s residents are afraid to return. The only people in town now are several dozen Kamajors who have transformed the few intact houses into a base.

Rebels remain in the area, and skirmishes erupt almost daily. Dozens of nearby villages and towns also have been abandoned.