Rebels clash with government forces in Sierra Leone

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone - Guerrillas clashed with pro-government forces at a strategic crossroads in Sierra Leone, even as the rebels released more U.N. hostages, U.N. and army officials said Saturday.

A group of 180 U.N. peacekeepers was handed over Friday to authorities in Foya, a border town in neighboring Liberia, according to a government statement released in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. Liberia said fewer than 100 of the original 500 hostages remained in rebel hands.

By Saturday evening, 102 of the released hostages had been airlifted from Foya to Monrovia and on to Sierra Leone, U.N. spokesman David Wimhurst said. An additional 30 freed captives were still waiting for transportation from Monrovia.

The 100 Zambians and two Kenyans who arrived at Lungi airport, across the bay from the capital, Freetown, were unharmed, though a few have Malaria, Wimhurst said.

Despite the releases, fighting between rebels and pro-government forces was reported overnight at Rogberi Junction, about 50 miles east of Freetown, Wimhurst said. He had no further details.

Pro-government forces were advancing along the road east from Rogberi Junction to Lunsar, Lt. Col. Sam Mboma said at a news briefing Saturday at Sierra Leone defense headquarters.

''Our main task is to neutralize any point from where we are being attacked,'' said Mboma, who declined to give further details of the fighting.

Meanwhile, West African heads of state were gathering in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Saturday for a meeting to discuss the crisis in Sierra Leone. Informal talks were scheduled Saturday night with the main gathering marking the 25th anniversary of the West African political and economic community, ECOWAS, on Sunday.

Before leaving Monrovia for the meeting, Liberian President Charles Taylor cautioned against Sierra Leone's plans to put rebel Revolutionary United Front leader Foday Sankoh on trial before peace had been restored.

Sankoh was convicted of treason in 1998 and sentenced to death but was later released from jail under the provisions of a peace accord signed last July that was meant to end the West African country's eight-year civil war.

''This time around Sankoh will be prosecuted,'' President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah said Friday on state radio and television - the government's first statement on his fate since the rebel leader's capture earlier this month.

Kabbah did not say what charges the rebel chief would face or when a trial would be held. The government has said that any prosecution would be for crimes that were committed after last year's signing of the peace deal that granted the rebels amnesty for previous abuses.

The government has been investigating Sankoh's role in the deaths of 21 people at the hands of rebel gunmen during a protest in front of his Freetown residence earlier this month, as well as allegations that rebels have been involved in diamond smuggling.

U.N. and human rights officials also charge that rebels have continued to rape, kill and maim civilians in parts of Sierra Leone that remain under their control.

The latest clashes occurred not far from where Associated Press Television News cameraman Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora and Reuters correspondent Kurt Schork were killed Wednesday in a rebel ambush. South African cameraman Mark Chisholm and Greek photographer Yannis Behrakis suffered light injuries in the same attack.

In his broadcast comment, Kabbah expressed his sorrow to the families of the journalists.

''These men were not involved in any fighting but were trying to bring out the facts for the whole world to know,'' Kabbah said.

The rebels killed tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneons and intentionally mutilated many more during the civil war. The conflict reignited earlier this month when the RUF took the U.N. peacekeepers hostage and began advancing toward Freetown.

Since then, a ragtag alliance of pro-government forces has been pushing the rebels away from the capital.