Freetown - Nigeria poured fresh reinforcements into Sierra Leone yesterday, raising the size of a West African intervention force fighting rebels there to at least 17,000 men, a spokesman for the ECOMOG force said.
Roman Catholic Church officials, meanwhile, said they had lost contact with four priests in the Kambaia area of the north, where the rebels have been active since the West African peacekeepers returned President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah to power in March.