Britain sends aid to beleaguered Kabbah

BRITAIN ANNOUNCED yesterday it is giving pounds 1m of "logistical" and other support to the beleaguered government of Sierra Leone and the Nigerian-led force that is combating a fierce rebel advance on the capital, Freetown.

"This further assistance to the government of Sierra Leone and Ecomog is a demonstration of our commitment to help bring stability to Sierra Leone and promote democracy in that country and more widely in Africa," said the Foreign Office minister Tony Lloyd.

A Foreign Office spokesman said two-thirds of the aid would go directly to the West African Ecomog forces resisting the rebels, and would include medical supplies, spares and transport equipment.

The rebels reached Hastings airport on the eastern outskirts of Freetown at the weekend. Nigerian warplanes were in action yesterday in an attempt to prevent them entering the capital. An Ecomog spokesman said Nigerian Alpha jets had bombed rebels yesterday in a mountain cave hideout in Mankey, near the airport and killed more than 100. Nigerian planes were also in action around Lunsar, north of Freetown, and Ecomog troops had retaken the nearby town of Port Loko, the spokesman said.

The insurgents are renegade soldiers and guerrillas loyal to a military junta evicted from Freetown by Ecomog last February, 10 months after a coup against the democratically elected president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.

Ecomog reinstated Mr Kabbah in March but the rebels regrouped and launched a new campaign after their leader, Foday Sankoh, was sentenced to death for treason in October.

Although both Ecomog and the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone have discounted any rebel takeover of the capital, the insurgents still hold sway in the north of the country and are controlling the northern provincial capital, Makeni, which they retook from Ecomog last week.

"The rebels have conscripted thousands of able-bodied men and women in Makeni and are training them to fight," said one UN source .

"They are patrolling Makeni in Jeeps and on foot, stopping people from fleeing the town."

Many residents, however, continue to flee. Those reaching Freetown have given accounts of summary executions of people the rebels consider sympathetic to President Kabbah.