Freetown - Hundreds of combatants from Sierra Leone's decade-old civil war have disarmed this week in Kono, a senior UN official said yesterday.
Gen Daniel Opande, commander of the UN mission in Sierra Leone, said Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels and members of the state-backed Civil Defence Forces (CDF) had turned up in hordes to lay down their arms.
Disarmament in Kono began on July 2nd and was due to end on Tuesday but it was extended by a week as the process had been stalled by a ceasefire violation. Gen Opande attributed the increase in the surrender of weapons to the fact that both the RUF and CDF were trying to meet the deadline. The RUF and the CDF recently agreed to lift all checkpoints in Kono and to stop mining the socalled "blood diamonds" used to fund their decade-old campaign.