Aid workers in Sierra Leone say tens of thousands of people have fled the recent fighting between pro-government forces and rebels loyal to the ousted military regime.

Some forty-thousand refugees from a camp in the central town of Masingbay scattered following a rebel raid.

Several thousand have arrived in the government-held city of Bo in the south, while others are heading for the northern government-held town of Kambia.

Our correspondent says the rebels have taken a string of towns in the north of the country, but the Nigerian-led West African force, defending the government, appears for now to have prevented the rebels from entering the capital, Freetown.