U.N. Says Its Forces Didn’t Fire on Crowd

A U.N. spokesman denied that U.N. forces opened fire on protesters over the weekend in an incident that injured at least 13 people. Witnesses said Sunday that U.N. peacekeepers and Sierra Leone police fired to disperse hundreds of youths in Freetown, the capital, who were demanding the lifting of a curfew. But U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard in New York said: “The impression we have is that the U.N. troops were basically trying to restore order. They say they did not fire their weapons.”