BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: The British Defense Ministry is deploying some 1,600 troops Sunday to West Africa as a, quote, "precautionary measure" in case it needs to evacuate its citizens from Sierra Leone. Nearly 500 U.N. peacekeepers have been captured by rebels over the past week. The U.N. Security Council says some of them are freed, but there's no word if they escaped or were released. Hundreds, including aid workers, missionaries and civilians have been evacuated in recent days. However, a United Nations spokesman says that an earlier report that rebels were approaching Sierra Leone's capital was wrong.</s>PHILIP WINSLOW, U.N. SPOKESMAN: We, the peacekeeping mission here, made a rather serious error in our earlier statement to you when we stated that the RUF rebels were on the outskirts of a part of Freetown. They in fact -- the rebels -- the last contact we had with the rebels was between Rodbury Junction (ph) and Masiaka, which would be about 65 kilometers to the east of Freetown. So we made an error. The attack that looked like it was happening on Freetown was not.</s>NELSON: The rebel advance reportedly ended when the commander radioed his troops telling them to stop.
U.N. Official Retracts Statement on Rebels Proximity to Capital of Sierra Leone