Sierra Leone repels attack by ‘renegade soldiers’ on Freetown barracks

Sierra Leone said it had pushed "renegade soldiers" who attempted to break into a military armoury in Freetown during the early hours of yesterday back to the outskirts of the capital and had restored calm, after imposing a nationwide curfew.The West African country’s civil aviation authority urged airlines to reschedule flights after the curfew was declared, while a soldier on its frontier with neighbouring Guinea told Reuters they had been instructed to shut the border.A Reuters journalist, who earlier witnessed an armed group of men commandeer a police vehicle near the Wilberforce barracks, said nearby streets were mostly empty."We’ll clean this society. We know what we are up to. We are not after any ordinary civilians who should go about their normal business," one of the masked men, who was dressed in military fatigues, said before driving away.Sierra Leone has been tense since President Julius Maada Bio was re-elected in June, a result rejected by the main opposition candidate and questioned by international partners including the US and the European Union.In August 2022, at least 21 civilians and six police officers were killed in anti-government protests in Sierra Leone, which is still recovering from a 1991-2002 civil war in which more than 50,000 were killed and hundreds maimed. Bio said the protests were an attempt to overthrow the government.Sierra Leone’s interior minister David Taluva told Reuters that the assailants had attacked a police barracks after running out of ammunition and had seized more arms from police officers.Sustained gunfire could still be heard in some neighbourhoods of Freetown as residents hunkered down in their homes around 1500 GMT yesterday, Reuters reporters said.Sierra Leone’s information minister Chernor Bah said in a statement that most of Freetown was calm and under the control of security forces, who had engaged the assailants in the Jui district in the eastern fringes of the city.It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in the barracks attack or during the gunfire in Freetown yesterday. Bah said security forces were making progress in apprehending those involved in the attack, but gave no further details.A video shared on social media showed three men, two in fatigues and one in civilian clothes, with their arms tied behind their backs sitting in a military truck surrounded by soldiers. Reuters has not authenticated the video.Bah said that major detention centres including the Pademba Road prisons were attacked and inmates released by the unidentified assailants, confirming earlier reports from a government source.It was not immediately clear how many prisoners had broken out of the facility, which a US State Department report said was designed for 324 inmates but held more than 2,000 in 2019.