Freetown - Rebels in Sierra Leone yesterday freed the last of the peacekeepers they seized this month, ending a crisis pitting the guerrillas against the United Nations, and raising hopes that the country was pulling back from the brink of civil war.
The spokesman of the UN mission in Sierra Leone, Mr David Wimhurst, said: "We believe that all the peacekeepers held hostage by the Sierra Leone rebels are now free." He said a final group of 85 detained peacekeepers had been freed and taken by helicopter in three batches to Monrovia, the capital of neighbouring Liberia.
He said a small number of UN troops who remained missing may have been those whose remains were found last week at a road junction 90 km north-east of the capital, Freetown. The corpses were wearing UN uniforms but were in a state of advanced decomposition, making them difficult to identify.
RUF guerrillas seized nearly 500 UN peacekeepers early this month in a series of actions that torpedoed a UN-mediated peace accord which was signed in July last year.