Child fighters vow to thwart rebel advance

MUHAMMAD KAMARA is preparing to go into battle. The barechested teenager is pumped up on drink and charms which he believes will protect him from bullets hang from his slender neck. An AK47, nearly taller than himself, is slung around his arm.

A member of the Kamajor militia, Muhammad believes that the bullets of the Revolutionary United Front rebels, whom he is going to fight, will bounce off him if he is hit. He believes he is protected from danger by higher powers. He has tribal markings, long cuts made into his flesh during an initiation ceremony when he was a child which qualified him to be a Kamajor member.

Muhammad also has native cotton dress, cleansed to give the fighter special powers. That, with his gun and the rounds of anti-aircraft bullets strung around his body like necklaces, is all that Muhammad believes he needs to fight Foday Sankoh and his men.

Muhammad and his clan of fighters, mostly teenagers carrying flasks of alcohol, are heading for Waterloo, the strategic town 15 miles from Freetown. "Yesterday we got ambushed six miles from here," he says, in Krio, Sierra Leone's lingua franca. "We retreated. Now we have been reinforced by more fighters. We are going to face the enemy to take back our positions."

It is strange to hear military jargon coming from a child, especially when he and his friends, all dressed the same way, with charms and beaded red and yellow necklaces and bracelets, beg for food and water. "We haven't eaten in days," says one, devouring a biscuit and gulping water.

Two United Nations soldiers stood nearby, intimidated by the crowd of Kamajors, some of whom were not as friendly as Muhammad. "We aren't sure of their identity," said one Jordanian UN soldier. "They might be rebels."

Many of the young fighters were high on marijuana and gin, and lounged under mango trees, their guns menacingly in position. "Don't come near us," shouted one who looked no older than 12 and had a bandage on his wounded head. "Women are not allowed near us before a battle. We will lose our power."

Overhead, UN helicopters flew into the area, bringing reinforcements against the sudden RUF movement which had encircled this area.

According to civilians on the road, who carried their meagre belongings - chickens in baskets, blankets, sleeping mats - the rebels had taken Masiaka, 47 miles from Freetown, and were moving into Waterloo, closer to the capital.

"There is panic in Waterloo, everyone is fleeing the gunshots," said Kabba Bundu, who was walking with his family. Like most of the thousands jamming the road to Freetown, he had begun at dawn on Tuesday, after the first signs of the rebel advance.

By the road, Kaditu Kamara was weeping. Wearing only a ripped bra and a lappa, a sarong wrapped round her waist, she had lost her eight-year-old daughter Fatmata Sesay on the road outside Waterloo. "I told her to wait for me, that I was going to find a car, and when I looked down, she was gone," she said. "Please find her. She's wearing a red dress with white stripes. She's all alone." But amid the thousands it was impossible to find one small girl, and the UN said the road beyond the checkpoint was very dangerous.

The UN could not confirm details of what was happening in Waterloo because, they said, they were in "operational phase" but the displaced people who came from Waterloo confirmed reports that the rebels were moving around Waterloo and that they had heard fighting.

Most were headed for the crowded National Camp in Freetown where 5,000 people have entered in the past three days, fleeing from fighting in the outskirts of Freetown.

"Waterloo is exactly what it sounds like," said one UN official. "It's the place where we have to stop them."

The people walking down the road in the scorching sun have seen this horror before. Many talk of losing their families and homes in the fighting that has engulfed this country for eight years. Now they walk sorrowfully towards Freetown, having lost their homes again, and having lost faith in the United Nations, which they believe cannot protect them. "We are hungry," called one man, his life's belongings strapped on his shoulders