/ 25 May 1999

S LEONE REBELS HIT GUINEA

TEN people were killed and several dozen were wounded when rebels from Sierra Leone attacked a village near Forecariah in southern Guinea at the weekend, Guinean television reported late on Monday. Villagers told television reporters that more than 200 men armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and machetes attacked the village of Tassin on the border with Sierra Leone, burning houses and stealing cattle and food. They said that in all, three groups of rebels attacked the village on Saturday night. Meanwhile, in Sierra Leone where a ceasefire between the rebels and government officially went into force Monday, rebels launched a series of attacks in the early morning in the suburbs of Kenema in the south east of the country, according to press reports. A spokesman for the west African intervention force ECOMOG confirmed the reports, but added its troops and civil defense units had repelled the rebel assaults.