Troops Fight To Regain Control Of Sierra Leone Residents Cheer Nigerian Soldiers As They Wipe Out Junta

With machine guns rattling in the background, artillery shells slammed down on the central town of Bo on Tuesday in a new round of fighting in this war-ravaged West African country.

The battle came just four days after a Nigerian-led intervention force drove Lt. Col. Johnny Paul Koroma’s military junta from power in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown.

Residents in Bo, about 150 miles southeast of Freetown, were taking cover from the shelling at a relief agency compound. They could not say where the artillery was coming from.

The Nigerian-led troops have begun advancing outside the capital, but it wasn’t immediately clear who was doing the fighting Tuesday. Along with the intervention forces and remnants of junta troops, there were rebel bands in the region that both support and oppose the junta.

Speaking by telephone, one Bo inhabitant said people had been pinned down for more than five hours of fighting.

Relief agencies were struggling to cope with an influx of townspeople looking for shelter and help.

“We have 1,500 people in our compound and absolutely nothing to give them,” Martha Carey, a member of the relief agency Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press by satellite telephone. “Our blankets, medicines and other supplies have all been looted.”

Carey said she didn’t know if there were any casualties in Tuesday’s fighting.

The intervention troops are trying to open supply routes into Freetown.

“We will continue to expand outside Freetown to try to see where the junta has moved to in the hinterlands,” Nigerian Gen. Timothy Shelpidi said Tuesday. “Where they refuse to hand over their weapons, we will ensure that they do so by force.”

The Red Cross in Freetown was compiling a list of people most in need of immediate assistance, including more than 1,000 left homeless in last week’s offensive by the Nigerianled coalition.

A boat carrying about 700 tons of food and medicine was scheduled to arrive in Freetown on Wednesday, said Thorkesson Diego, a Red Cross relief coordinator.

For the time being, “it is not possible to distribute food and assistance to everybody, only to the most vulnerable people,” Diego said.

By Friday, the foreign force drove Sierra Leone’s 10-month-old military regime from Freetown, clearing the way for the return of the country’s elected president, Ahmed Tejan Kabbah. He was expected to return within a few weeks.

Since then, the intervention force has been working to restore order, and troops have warned they will shoot looters and vigilantes.

The Red Cross has appealed to angry residents to refrain from revenge attacks against former members of Koroma’s junta. Shortly after the intervention force took over, angry mobs attacked and killed a number of junta soldiers. Koroma fled toward neighboring Liberia.

Freetown residents have welcomed the Nigerian troops, celebrating the ouster of Koroma’s regime.