In our series of letters from African journalists, Umaru Fofana looks back at how reporting on Sierra Leone’s civil war 25 years ago got personal and what dangers correspondents still face today.

During the bloody rebel war that raged in Sierra Leone for more than a decade, fake news and rumours abounded – without the aid of social media.

At a time when only the elite had landlines and there was no internet or mobile telephones, reporters often had to go in person to find out information.

I would then have to go the telecommunications HQ in the capital, Freetown, to make a reverse-charge call to London to be able to file a report for the BBC.

Six years in to the conflict, on 9 October 1997, I ventured out to confirm a report that the military’s HQ had been bombed by a Nigerian military jet.

Source: BBC

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