British paratroop liaison team arrives

A liaison team from the 1st Battalion of the British Army Parachute Regiment has arrived in Freetown where discussions continue to free seven troops abducted by renegade soldiers known as the West Side Boys, news reports said, quoting a British military spokesman in Freetown. The official, Lt-Cmdr Tony Cramp, described the arrival of the “small liaison team” as “standard procedure”. A British army information officer at the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Britain, told IRIN on Tuesday that some 150 paratroopers were in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, some 880 km northwest of Freetown. He described the measure “a sensible precautionary contingency plan”.