Some 150 British paras on standby in Senegal

Some 150 paratroopers arrived on Tuesday in Senegal for possible redeployment to Sierra Leone where discussions are underway to free six British soldiers and a Sierra Leonean officer detained by renegades calling themselves the West Side Boys, a British army official told IRIN. The officer, from the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Britain, described the deployment of a company of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment based in Colchester, England, as “a sensible precautionary contingency plan”. He declined to comment on their possible use should the discussions to free the detainees fail. The British Broadcasting Corporation reported opposition party support for the action. The broadcaster quoted the opposition Conservative Party as saying the measure was a sign that the British government intended to take “firm action” to free its soldiers. “It is intolerable that British army soldiers should remain as hostages of this terrorist group,” Iain Duncan Smith, the shadow defence secretary, said. Dakar, 880 km northwest of Freetown, has served as a staging or transit point for British forces on operations in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. Paratroopers from the same unit were sent to Sierra Leone in May to help with the evacuation of British, EU and Commonwealth nations when another rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front, threatened Freetown. The detained soldiers are among some 300 from the Royal Irish Regiment.