U.N. Secures Key Highway in Sierra Leone
U.N. peacekeepers Saturday dismantled checkpoints manned by dissidents and expelled them from the main highway between the capital and the interior.
It was the second successive weekend of confrontation in Sierra Leone.
U.N. spokeswoman Hirut Befecadu said that Indian, Jordanian and Nigerian peacekeepers, backed by air support, moved against dissidents known as the “West Side Boys,” former rebels who had rallied to the present government after a 1999 peace deal.
“We went to clear the road. We have done that. The operation is over,” she said, adding that the dissidents were forced from the highway to the nearby Okra Hills.
The offensive followed the rescue last weekend of more than 230 peacekeepers and military observers pinned down by Revolutionary United Front rebels.
The U.N. spokeswoman said that the peacekeepers suffered no losses during Saturday’s operation but that a Guinean soldier was seriously wounded in an ambush in an adjacent area.
She said that the West Side Boys had been harassing civilian traffic on the Freetown highway and that the peacekeepers had gone in after repeated attempts to persuade them to hand in their weapons with a view to joining the new Sierra Leone army.
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