REBELS in Sierra Leone have freed a first batch of 139 detained UN peacekeepers and sent them to neighbouring Liberia, a U.N. spokesman said on Monday. David Wimhurst told Reuters on Monday that 15 of the freed peacekeepers had been sent to Liberia’s capital Monrovia and the remainder were in the Liberian border town of Foya. The rebels, who have been flouting a 1999 peace deal, took several hundred peacekeepers hostage at the start of May following a dispute over disarmament near the central town of Makeni. They attacked peacekeepers, wrong-footing the ill-prepared U.N. force which at one stage looked like being overwhelmed by a rebel advance on the capital. A British evacuation force helped secure Freetown and restore U.N. confidence.