Government troops and Nigerian peacekeepers in Sierra Leone drove rebel fighters away from the capital Freetown yesterday in some of the fiercest fighting since the civil war erupted again last week.
Fears mounted about the fate of 500 UN soldiers held hostage by the rebels and nine men of the Kenyan contingent lay wounded in hospital after an incident in which government soldiers mistook them for rebels in captured UN uniforms.
In an hour-long battle, helicopter gunships pounded rebel positions while Nigerian groundtroops serving with the UN used anti-aircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons to capture territory beyond Waterloo, 21 miles south-east of Freetown.
The fighting was some of the heaviest since the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels went back on the offensive, defying a peace agreement reached in July 1999 after an eight-year civil war.
The RUF advance sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing into Freetown but the rebels were stopped at Waterloo.
Local anti-RUF forces, the 8,900-strong UN peacekeeping force and 700 British paratroopers bolstered the defences of the beleaguered capital. But the capture of nearly 500 Zambian, Kenyan and Indian peacekeepers by rebels last week provided an added complication for the UN.
Sierra Leone's Information Ministry said the nine Kenyans were wounded on Wednesday on the road to the northern town of Kabala after breaking out from encircling rebel forces in Makeni.
Downing Street signalled last night that its troops may remain in Sierra Leone for up to another month to help the United Nations build up its peacekeeping force.
In Freetown frightened civilians scrambled to board ferries crossing the estuary to Lungi where the British paras have secured the international airport. The refugees are terrified of the rebels, who hacked hands and limbs off civilians at the height of the civil war.