By
The Associated Press
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - U.N. peacekeepers and Sierra Leone police opened fire yesterday to disperse hundreds of tire-burning youths demanding the lifting of a curfew, witnesses said.
At least 13 civilians, including two children, were wounded.
British soldiers tried to calm the pre-dawn demonstration stemming from public anger over a spate of armed robberies during curfew hours, which the government of this war-ravaged West African nation has imposed in an effort to prevent rebel attacks.
The youths said the 11 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew prevents them from mobilizing to protect their neighborhoods from robberies. In the midst of the demonstration, the acting defense chief of staff, Tom Carew, appealed to protesters to go home while authorities looked into their grievances.
The protest began about 4:30 a.m. after thieves raided a home on Kissy Road in the densely populated eastern end of the coastal capital. Police showed up after the culprits had fled, prompting indignant youths to barricade roads with burning tires.
Witnesses said armored-car loads of police and Nigerian U.N. peacekeepers tried to scatter the surging crowd by firing automatic rifles - mostly in the air but sometimes in the direction of the protesters.
At least 13 protesters were injured, most with bullet wounds, said German doctor Alec Neelsen, who operated on several at the city's central Connaught hospital.
A Sierra Leonean medical officer later put the injured toll at 16, including gunshot victims and others who were stampeded by the crowd.
An Associated Press reporter counted eight with gunshot wounds lying on stretchers in the hospital's emergency ward. One of them, 24-year-old motorcycle mechanic Emmanuel Musa, was shot in the right ankle.
"When I was wounded, I saw only U.N. soldiers in the area," Musa said. "One of them stopped a passing vehicle, which he asked to convey some of us (wounded) to the hospital."
Ibrahim Conteh, a 12-year-old schoolboy, also with a gunshot wound, said: "When I was wounded, a (U.N.) soldier dropped his gun on the ground and it went off and hurt some of us," Conteh said.
Numerous other witnesses also reported seeing the U.N. troops and Sierra Leone police fire toward the crowds.
U.N. officials in Freetown could not be reached for comment, although a duty officer at the U.N. headquarters in New York, Edoardo Bellando, said he had been informed "thirdhand" that U.N. troops had been present when "police fired in the air to disperse a mob of thieves who were throwing rocks."
Sierra Leone police Inspector-General Keith Biddle said the reasons behind the shooting were "not 100 percent clear," but confirmed that both U.N. and police members had fired their guns.
At one point during the demonstration, heavily armed British troops in three military Land Rovers drove through the crowds and were cheered by the protesting youths, while others chanted "no more curfew."
The British forces are in Sierra Leone to provide military training to help the West African nation's shattered army fight the country's brutal rebels. In some cases, the British have also provided military backing to the struggling U.N. peacekeeping force protecting the capital and major towns.
Lt. Col. Tony Cramp, the British military spokesman in Sierra Leone, declined to comment on yesterday's events, which he described as a "coordinated action between UNAMSIL (the name given to the U.N. peacekeeping force) and the Sierra Leone police."
Although the gunfire died down around 7:30 a.m., small crowds of protesters continued to gather until nearly noon. U.N. troops in armored vehicles barricaded streets and churchgoers scurried home to safety.
"This is a ... demonstration to focus attention on the security situation in our area," said one of the protesters, Mohammed Kamara. "Nearly every day we cannot sleep at night because of rapid firing while armed robbery is going on."
The curfew was put in place earlier this year in an effort to prevent incursions by Sierra Leone's rebel Revolutionary United Front, which controls much of the country's jungle interior.
The rebels, who have murdered tens of thousands of civilians and intentionally maimed many more in a campaign of terror, renewed Sierra Leone's eight-year civil war in May by advancing on the capital and capturing some 500 U.N. troops.
The 13,000-strong peacekeeping force, the world's largest current U.N. deployment, has been riven with organizational problems and infighting. Two major contributors, India and Jordan, have announced they will pull out.
