Libyan helicopters to help evacuate UN peacekeepers

Libyan helicopters arrived at Liberia’s Foya airport on Monday for possible use in the evacuation of wounded UN peacekeepers detained by Sierra Leone’s RUF rebels, PANA reported, quoting a Libyan Embassy statement in Dakar, Senegal.

The agency said Libya had also sent doctors.

Diplomatic sources in Monrovia confirmed that Libyan helicopters had been made available to the Liberian government but could not say how they were being used. The United Nations Office in Liberia told IRIN that commercially chartered helicopters were used on Monday to evacuate to Monrovia 29 UN peacekeepers released by the RUF at Foya, 250 km north of the capital.

West African leaders at a recent summit gave Liberian President Charles Taylor a mandate to negotiate with the rebels and a Liberian government team is in Sierra Leone for that purpose. Taylor has called for an end to the hostilities, saying that attacks against the RUF are delaying the release of the detainees, news organisations reported.

Freed peacekeepers arriving in Monrovia are medically screened and treated, if necessary, by Liberian doctors at the city’s Spriggs Payne airport, a source said. More difficult cases are referred to the city’s John F. Kennedy Hospital, the largest in the country.

UN sources told IRIN that one Gambian UN officer detained by the RUF, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Mendy, was being treated in Sierra Leone at the Kono Hospital, where he had been taken by his captors.