That was the darkness of a nearly nine-year war made visible.
Government troops have never in the nine-year civil war cut so deeply into rebel territory during their annual dry-season offensive.
The prosecution of the two officers would be unprecedented in the nine-year civil war.
The rebels used about 5,000 children to fight in Sierra Leone's nine-year civil war.
Of the estimated 45,000 combatants in the country's nine-year war, half are said to have given up their weapons.
Either way, however, the effort to intervene in Sierra Leone's brutal nine-year civil war was doomed from the start.
This town, attacked 59 times during a nine-year civil war, was left for dead, deserted by its residents.
It is estimated that 1.2 million civilians have died in the nine-year war, and countless others have been wounded.
The goal is to end a nine-year civil war.
The rebels tried to disrupt the vote, calling it a facade for American efforts to discount the nine-year civil war.