Army hits rebels in Sierra Leone

Guinean soldiers have killed up to 400 Sierra Leonean rebels in a recent cross border retaliatory raid, Guinean Defence Minister Dorank Diasseny has said. “Our soldiers entered far into their lines, identified the rebel posts and then conducted their punitive operation,” he said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday by Radio France International. Conakry took the action because of repeated Sierra Leonean rebel attacks, mostly on the Guinean villages of Tassin and Mola, close to the Sierra Leone border. Rebels have been attacking villages in search of food, he said. News reports say the rebels kill, burn homes and steal property. Diasseny identified the rebels as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by Foday Sankoh, out of which splinter groups had emerged. “We Guineans consider all of them as rebels,” he said. Reacting to this, Sankoh said reports of a RUF splinter were “useless propaganda and lies designed to divert our attention form the process of peace”, AFP reported on Wednesday. Sankoh is in Lome, Togo, attending peace talks between the RUF and the Sierra Leone government.