Crossfire Killing Sierra Leone Civilians

Leaflets exhorting Sierra Leone’s feared rebels to lay down their arms fluttered from the sky on a cloudy day in an interior town just moments before a helicopter gunship rained bombs on rebels and civilians alike.

Pushing to contain a rebel menace that has left tens of thousands dead and many more intentionally maimed in nearly nine years of civil war, Sierra Leone’s British-backed government is launching an offensive that combines propaganda with raw force.

Yet since Sierra Leone’s war was reignited in early May, many civilians have been caught in the cross fire, including some killed through a combination of carelessness and neglect by the same government forces trying to protect them, witnesses and aid workers say.

Tens of thousands of people have fled fighting between erratic, undisciplined pro-government soldiers and militiamen and Revolutionary United Front rebels who have gained notoriety for chopping off the hands, legs, ears and lips of thousands of men, women and children in a bid to gain influence through fear.

They have also raped and looted on a massive scale almost wherever they go. While government forces have also committed scattered abuses, human rights workers and the U.N. agree that the scale of rebel atrocities cannot be compared.

The latest civilian exodus, relief officials with the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders say, is from the central rebel-held town of Makeni, 80 miles east of Freetown, where Sierra Leonean military attack choppers have conducted a series of deadly bombing raids.

During the first government bombardment on May 29, a chopper dropped pamphlets warning the rebel Revolutionary Front: “this time we’ve dropped leaflets. Next time it will be a half-inch Gatling machine gun or 57 millimeter rockets ... or ALL OF THEM!”

Other papers showed pictures of elderly people and babies with chopped-off limbs--presumably hacked off by rebels--and berated the renegades for causing widespread suffering.

Curious civilians in the streets and marketplaces were reaching up for the whirling papers, witnesses said, when rebels in the town opened fire on the aircraft, which responded by randomly bombarding the town--eight bombs in four successive runs, according to refugees who fled the fighting. Two witnesses independently said they saw the bodies of at least 17 civilians killed.

Army director of operations Col. Alfred Claude Nelson Williams said it was “rather unfortunate if a few civilians were around and were wounded” in Makeni, but otherwise would not comment on reports of civilian deaths. He said the attack helicopter had targeted only rebel hideouts, including a former veterinary clinic occupied by both rebel fighters and civilians.

Some observers said the bombings and propaganda campaign could be the start of an effort by the government to clear Makeni and other rebel towns of civilians to clear the ground for advancing government troops. An uneasy alliance of pro-government forces--including former enemy junta fighters and traditional hunter militiamen--have slowly pushed closer to Makeni and toppled several rebel-held towns in recent weeks.

Britain Aiding Government Forces

The government forces are being aided by military advisors and technical equipment from Britain, Sierra Leone’s former colonial ruler.

A growing number of U.N. troops have also arrived in the country in a bid to salvage the country’s lapsed peace accord, signed last year.

If driving civilians out of rebel-held front-line territory was the government’s goal, it appeared to be working.

At least 21,000 civilians fled Makeni and nearby Magburaka in recent days to the crossroads town of Mile 91, 30 miles to the south, United Nations spokesman David Wimhurst said. Some went on to Freetown and many more were believed on their way.

Thirty-year-old Victor Kanu left with his wife, four children and three sisters from a village on the outskirts of Makeni on June 1. They were forced to abandon their elderly grandmother, who could not walk, he said, closing his eyes and holding his head as he related the ordeal at the “Mandela camp” for the internally displaced in Freetown.

“We survived, I don’t know how,” Kanu said. “My grandmother . . . [her fate] is in the hands of God now.”

Isata Conteh and her husband and three small children fled Makeni after the first round of bombings only to narrowly escape two other battles between pro-government Kamajor militiamen and rebel fighters during a grueling nine-day journey by foot to the capital.

“The rebels tried to stop us from going. They said ‘You should die with us,’ ” Conteh said at another burgeoning tent city for refugees in the capital. The family slipped into the surrounding scrub forest and slogged for days through swamps and rivers to the east.

On one occasion, pro-government soldiers at the town of Port Loko had assaulted and robbed her family and other refugees who were traveling with them, she said.

The troops accused them of being “rebel spies,” Conteh said, her voice heaving with laughter but her eyes moist with tears as she recalled the ordeal. The fighters eventually let them pass after robbing them of their remaining belongings.

Conteh said she would not return to her home until long after Sierra Leone’s war was finally over. She did not trust either the government or rebel forces to protect her.