By Lansana Fofana
FREETOWN, May 12 1997 (IPS)

A splinter group of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) has carried out a spate of attacks in Sierra Leone amid a leadership crisis in the rebel movement.

Over the weekend, rebels attacked the northern districts of Bombali and Port Loko, burning homes and killing at least 13 people. A few days before, they ambushed a UN vehicle.

“They stormed our town clad in military combat fatigues and said they were attacking on all fronts in reaction to the continued ‘detention’ of (RUF leader) Corporal Sankoh in Nigeria,” said Marie Jah, who fled Gbendembu, a small town in Bombali, after one of the attacks.

The 40-year-old businesswoman, who said she witnessed the attack, reported that nearly 100 homes were razed by the rebels who also “carted away food and household effects and left a total of 13 persons dead and well over 20 wounded”.

Another settlement, Buya Romenday, suffered a similar attack. However, there was no immediate word about the casualties there.

Dozens of people injured in the attacks have brought to the capital, Freetown, and hospitalised there. Some of them had their hands or feet chopped off — “as a warning to the people of Freetown that we are coming,” one woman quoted the rebels as saying.

The RUF has often mutilated its victims throughout the civil war which began in 1991. A peace pact signed on Nov. 30 last by RUF leader Foday Sankoh, who has been in Nigeria for weeks now, and Sierra Leonean President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah was thought to have ended the war. Since then, however, there have been skirmishes between RUF elements and a militia group made up of traditional hunters and, more recently, attacks on villages and small towns.

In response to the weekend attacks, the government has sent extra troops to the affected areas, according to an announcement carried on state radio and TV.

“The government views these developments as unfortunate and has therefore taken appropriate measures to protect lives and property,” ran the announcement, the first indication that the government has acknowledged that the fragile peace process has been derailed.

Military sources confirmed to IPS on Monday that troops were being massed in the north, which is one of the RUF’s strongholds.

“The rebels have threatened to enter Freetown if Foday Sankoh is not released from Nigeria and they have already started their attacks,” a senior military officer told IPS. “We cannot sit idly by and see these things happening.”

The trouble started around March, soon after Sankoh travelled to Nigeria, when a group of RUF leaders announced that he had been deposed as the rebel group’s leader.

This led to a split in the RUF and Sankoh loyalists, who were also angered by unconfirmed rumours that the rebel leader had been detained in Nigeria, reacted by abducting three RUF members while they were on a peace mission to the north.

The attacks have not been confined to the north. RUF troops loyal to Sankoh are also reported to be terrorising towns and villages in the strategic mining district of Moyamba in the south. They have burnt houses and farms there, plundering anything they can lay their hands on, area residents say.

According to intelligence reports, the rebels have been leaving a trail of graffiti such as “No Sankoh, no peace” and “The (ruling) SLPP is not serious about peace.”

But the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government feels it is the pro-Sankoh faction that “is intransigent and not interested in peace.” It said this in a statement after the cease- fire violations took on a new dimension, with attacks last week on a highway that had been safe for the past two years.

Bullets were showered early last week on a UN vehicle travelling along the highway. The four expatriates in the vehicle were seriously injured and one of them later died in a Freetown hospital.

Diplomats here were appalled by the incident and other armed attacks in the hinterland. “It seems now that the peace process is in big trouble,” said a Western envoy. “With no clear-cut leadership the rebels are behaving like loose cannon and this may not augur well for a country that is still picking up the pieces after six years of a destructive war.”

He said he believed peace brokers and the government needed to go back to the drawing board so as to remove the hurdles that have cropped up. “First of all I think Corporal Sankoh ought to be prevailed upon to see reason and comply with the Nov. 30 peace agreement,” said the diplomat. “There is no way Sankoh can be left out of the equation.”

The implementation of the peace agreement does appear to have entered a stalemate.

The attacks have resumed, the UN has not despatched a 700- member team that is to oversee the demobilisation of combattants, few of the rebels have disarmed and the RUF has failed to send representatives to a Joint Monitoring Group that is to oversee the peace process.

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