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UN Troops Begin Deployment in Rebel Stronghold in S. Leone
A senior UN officer Tuesday announced that the UN peacekeeping troops in Sierra Leone have deployed to the rebel headquarters town of Makeni, according to reports reaching Lagos from Freetown.
Major-General Martin Agwai, deputy military commander for the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), said the deployment began early in the day and is expected to be completed by evening.
It is the first time that deployment was made to the northern town since 500 UN peacekeepers were taken hostage in the rebel-held areas last May after the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels broke a 1999 peace deal.
The peacekeeping deployment into the strategically crucial rebel-held town was originally scheduled for last month, but it was delayed for another time on April 4 because the UNAMSIL could not afford to have the same kind of hostage incident.
Last month, the United Nations decided to re-deploy its peacekeeping troops across the war-torn country after the RUF rebels agreed to follow a new ceasefire signed last November in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
As the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world, the UNAMSIL, which the Security Council has agreed to increase to 17, 500 troops from the current 12,000, is trying to end the decade- long civil war in Sierra Leone.
The civil war has claimed at least 200,000 lives since it erupted in March 1991.
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