Leaders behind Sierra Leone attack held

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Sierra Leone’s president said most of the leaders of attacks on the country’s main military barracks and prisons had been arrested and normalcy had returned across the country after a 24-hour curfew was relaxed to a dusk-to-dawn lockdown.

The attacks early on Sunday morning surprised residents and security forces in the West African country.

“We will ensure that those responsible are held accountable,” President Julius Maada Bio said on national television.

“As your commander-in-chief, I want to assure everybody who is resident in Sierra Leone that we have overcome this challenge.”

Earlier, the government said security forces had repelled “renegade soldiers” who attempted to break into a military armory in the capital Freetown during the early hours of Sunday.

The individuals not only attacked the military barracks at Wilberforce but also other locations in the capital, including the Pademba Road Correctional Center, which led to the escape of prisoners, Bio said.

It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in the attack on the barracks or during the gunfire in Freetown on Sunday.

The country’s former president Ernest Bai Koroma said in a statement that a military guard assigned to his residence in the capital was shot point-blank, while another was “whisked away to an unknown location”.

Koroma did not say who shot the guard. He condemned the killing and the attack on the barracks.

“I am deeply concerned that once again our beloved nation could be subject to such insecurity,” he said.

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 neighboring Guinea told Reuters they had been instructed to shut the border.