FREETOWN/CONAKRY — Guinea has released 16 Sierra Leonean security personnel detained earlier this week in a disputed border area, easing a fresh diplomatic flare-up between the two West African neighbors. Sierra Leone’s information ministry said on Thursday that “all security officers arrested by the Guinean authorities have been safely handed over to Sierra Leone,” while Reuters reported the release followed contacts between officials from both countries.
The two governments have offered sharply different accounts of what happened near Kaliyereh in Sierra Leone’s Falaba district, a frontier area both sides have contested for years. Sierra Leone said its army and police personnel were building a border post and another facility in the town when Guinean forces arrived and seized them. Guinea, by contrast, said several dozen armed Sierra Leonean soldiers had crossed into Guinean territory without authorization, prompting its forces to detain 16 of them and confiscate equipment.
Reuters reported that Guinea Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah said on Thursday the dispute would be resolved quickly through diplomacy, signaling both sides want to prevent the episode from escalating. The release appears to support that effort, though neither side’s underlying territorial claim has changed.
The incident is the latest in a long-running border quarrel rooted in Sierra Leone’s 1991–2002 civil war. During that conflict, Guinea deployed troops to help defend Sierra Leone’s eastern frontier against rebels. But after the war ended, parts of the border remained disputed, and tensions have resurfaced periodically ever since. AP reported that Guinean troops entered a mineral-rich border town in Sierra Leone last year, reviving anxieties over sovereignty and control in the area.
The two countries share a border of roughly 700 kilometers and are both members of ECOWAS and the Mano River Union, regional groupings that provide diplomatic channels for de-escalation. For now, the handover of the detained officers lowers the immediate temperature, but the episode underscores how unresolved border claims can still trigger sudden security crises more than two decades after Sierra Leone’s war ended
