Qualla: Siege of Freetown https://qualla.com/siege-of-freetown en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:09 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Siege of Freetown https://qualla.com/siege-of-freetown Siege of Freetown: Introduction https://qualla.com/siege-of-freetown/ On the sixth of January, 1999, the people of Freetown woke to the sound of their city being overrun. Rebel forces of the Revolutionary United Front and their allies had fought their way into the capital, and over the days that followed they carried out a campaign so brutal that its own commanders gave it a name: "Operation No Living Thing." By the time West African peacekeepers pushed the rebels back out, as many as six thousand civilians in Freetown were dead. This is not a battle story. It is a memorial to the people of a city.

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]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/w/8/siege-of-freetown-wp/e9w8-siege-of-freetown-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Siege of Freetown: A War That Reached the Capital https://qualla.com/siege-of-freetown/ By 1999, Sierra Leone had endured eight years of civil war. The conflict had begun in 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front took up arms against the government, financing itself in part through the country's diamond fields. A 1997 military coup had briefly toppled the elected ...

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]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/w/8/siege-of-freetown-wp/e9w8-siege-of-freetown-a-war-that-reached-the-capital.mp3 0:06 2 full Siege of Freetown: The People of Freetown https://qualla.com/siege-of-freetown/ The toll of those weeks is recorded in numbers, but the numbers stand for people. Families in the crowded neighbourhoods of the East End. Patients and doctors in the city's hospitals - one physician counted two hundred bodies in the Connaught Hospital morgue within days of the as...

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]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/w/8/siege-of-freetown-wp/e9w8-siege-of-freetown-the-people-of-freetown.mp3 0:06 3 full Siege of Freetown: After the Smoke https://qualla.com/siege-of-freetown/ By February 1999, ECOMOG forces had retaken Freetown and forced the rebels back into the interior. But the war was not over - it would grind on until 2002, when it was finally declared at an end, after a British military intervention and a United Nations mission helped restore th...

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]]> Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/e/9/w/8/siege-of-freetown-wp/e9w8-siege-of-freetown-after-the-smoke.mp3 0:06 4 full