Sierra Leone's eight-year civil war has settled into an uneasy peace. But it has left a cruel legacy. At the height of the country's chaos this spring, rebel soldiers intensified an ugly ritual of amputations, seizing civilians and chopping off limbs. Human-rights groups estimate that thousands have been maimed in this fashion. Two of them told their stories to TIME's Malcolm Linton.
Issatu Kargbo is 13, one of seven children of farmer Alimany Kargbo, who moved last year to Samuel Town village, about 20 miles southeast of Freetown, because of fighting in his home area. The family lives in a shack in the garden of an abandoned house. Last Jan. 13, Issatu was staying with her aunt on the edge of Freetown, waiting to go for a medical checkup, when rebels overran her neighborhood:
It was a Wednesday--a very nice day with the sun shining. The rebels came to the house at around 4 in the afternoon. There were two: a man about the same age as my father and a child soldier carrying an ax. They weren't armed, apart from the ax, and they were in ordinary clothes. There were about 15 of us. The man picked out six and took us to the rebels' base at Black Tank. I was frightened because I didn't know what was going to happen.
At Black Tank the man called four other rebels to guard us. A lot of rebels were hiding in the bushes and around the houses. They had a big fire going near the verandah of the house. They ambushed the people who came past and pushed them into the fire, pointing their guns. They made them lie down in the fire. I saw it happen to five people. Three of them died in the fire, and two managed to get up and walk away, but they were badly burned, so maybe they died later--I don't know.
The children with me were crying. I was more frightened than before because I thought they were going to throw me into the fire. The rebels were laughing and making jokes, except for the man who had picked us out. His face was bad, so dark it was blue--you couldn't see any sign of laughter in it. He cut us with the ax one by one. I was number five. The adults were begging, and the children were crying. They put my hands on the ground and cut them off quickly, the left first. I didn't feel anything, or just something like a sting. Everything went dark, and I fell over on the ground. After a while I got up and walked a little way, but then I blacked out again and fell over. I don't know what happened to the other people. I had no idea why they did that to me.
It all took less than half an hour.
I walked back to the house. My aunt saw me and started to cry, but one of the rebels told her he would shoot her if she cried. That night I slept in an abandoned house, and the next day I went down to the main road. A rebel saw me waiting there and took me to the Summer Time clinic [a small clinic with a nurse but no doctor]. He gave me a bowl of rice. Then the other rebels came and took away the rice. They said they would kill anyone who said a word about what had happened. I was in the clinic for a few days. Then the Red Cross came and took me to hospital.