• by Lansana Fofana (freetown)
• Thursday, November 10, 1994
• Inter Press Service

FREETOWN, Nov 10 (IPS) - For weeks you hear little about the group of rebels who, in 1991, began an armed struggle which they hope will propel them to power.

Then, suddenly, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) hits the news again, as they did this week.

An undisclosed number of rebels, armed with assault rifles, matchetes and knives, stormed Kabala Town, about 180 miles north of Freetown on Monday in what has been described as the most ferocious attack in this low-intensity bush war.

Six civilians were killed, while 70 buildings, including the district police headquarters, a commercial bank and homes - were burnt to the ground. Most of Kabala's residents fled to nearby towns and villages.

"I had to flee dearly for my life in the face of continuous firing and I even saw two dead bodies lying on the street in my bid to escape. The attack was terrible," Dainka Marrah, a youth in his 20s, told IPS by phone from Makeni, a town near Kabala.

Marrah said most of the rebels were aged between 18 and 25 and were garbed in Sierra Leone Army combat fatigues.

"They could not spare women, kids and the old in their looting spree and acts of vandalism," he added.

The attack had little more than nuisance value since Kabala, a mining town with a few thousand inhabitants, is remote, has no working telephones and no electricity.

Ever since the war broke out three years ago, the RUF's strategy has been to hit small towns and then melt into the bush.

This has brought them no nearer to their purported objective: forcing the organisation of multiparty elections in this tiny West African nation of 4.5 million people.

In fact, the border between rebel activity and pure banditry is blurred.

Along roads in the southeast of the country, where most of the RUF activity is concentrated, ambushes in which travellers' vehicles and other valuables have been stolen used to be blamed on the RUF.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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