OWN CORRESPONDENT, Freetown | Wednesday 8.50am.
NINETY-three exhausted Zambian and Kenyan UN peacekeepers, held hostage for two weeks in the bush by rebels in Sierra Leone, have flown back to the government-controlled capital of Freetown.
Wearing a ragged array of uniforms and some shod in flip-flop sandals, they landed at Freetown’s Lungi airport on Tuesday aboard a Russian transport plane after the short flight from neighbouring Liberia.
Another 46 UN peacekeepers, also released into Liberian custody on Sunday, remain stuck at the border town of Foya waiting to be evacuated on Wednesday.
The liberation of the combined total of 139 leaves almost 350 UN hostages still in the hands of Foday Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front rebels.
Meanwhile, in Washington, US ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke on Tuesday called the rebels ”machete wielding murders” who have broken every agreement they had signed.
In a blazing attack he said the peace accord signed last year with the RUF is ”in tatters” and reserved fierce condemnation for Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader turned government minister following the accords.
”Foday Sankoh, the head of the RUF who has currently disappeared is a man who has really behaved in a way which I think puts him outside the acceptable limits,” said Holbrooke.
The UN ambassador was speaking on his return from a week-long diplomatic mission to Africa which took him to trouble spots including the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Horn of Africa, where renewed warfare is raging between Ethiopia and Eritrea. — Reuters & AFP