Shortly afterwards, Bo and Kenema, the country's second and third largest towns respectively, fell to Kamajors, civil defence forces that had remained loyal to Tejan Kabbah. The Sierra Leonean president, who has been living in neighbouring Guinea since last year's coup, has appointed a 10-member committee to run Sierra Leone until he returns to the country, which he has promised to do by next week. This brought to an end a civil disobedience campaign begun immediately after the coup by public servants who had preferred to stay off the job and remain unpaid rather than work for the junta. I believe in democracy and the will of the people. Even if I were to go without salaries for one year, I would continue working as long as it is under a democratic system,'' he says.
Food prices are high for the same reason.
Revenge killings that had occurred in the aftermath of the ouster have now stopped. Up until the early part of this week, militant youths had been lynching suspected junta members and sympathisers in broad daylight, prompting Khobe to call on the police to return to work. Kandeh Bangura, Deputy Inspector General of Police, told IPS that ''about 4,000 police officers have resumed duty and they are currently deployed at various stations in the capital''. We may have been pushed out of Freetown, but the war is not yet over,'' the AFRC's former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Lt. We intend to continue fighting in the countryside,'' added Collins, who was formerly a spokesman of the RUF, which fought successive governments here until it teamed up with the military after the 1997 coup.