Tombodu is a relatively small provincial town - the third largest town in

Kono District Kono District is a district in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. Its capital and largest city is Koidu Town. Motema is the second most populous city in the district. The other major towns in the district include Yengema, Tombodu, Jaiama ...

in the

Eastern Province, Sierra Leone The Eastern Province () is one of the four provinces of Sierra Leone. It covers an area of 15,676 km2 and has a population of 1,641,012 (2015 census). Its capital and administrative centre is Kenema. Eastern Province, the centre of the countr ...

. The town had a population of less than 3000 in the 2004 census.Republic of Sierra Leone: 2004 Population and Housing Census: Analytical Report on Population Distribution, Migration and Urbanisation in Sierra Leone.
''Ibrahim Mohamed Sesay, Andrew A. Karam, Jinnah J. Ngobeh.'' Published November 2006. Tombodu was RUF stronghold during the Sierra Leone civil war. The majority of the residents in the town are from the Kono

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

. The town is the birthplace of

Johnny Paul Koroma Major Johnny Paul Koroma (9 May 1960 – 1 June 2003/11 August 2017) was a Sierra Leonean military officer who was the head of state of Sierra Leone from May 1997 to February 1998. A member of the Limba people, Koroma began his military career ...

, the former leader of the

Armed Forces Revolutionary Council The Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) was a group of Sierra Leone soldiers that allied itself with the rebel Revolutionary United Front in the late 1990s. While the AFRC briefly controlled the country in 1998, it was driven from the ca ...

(AFRC) military junta of Sierra Leone. The town has two primary schools and one secondary school. It has two nice hills: one in the east and another in the west of the town. Tombodu was the site of a major massacre in 1998 during the Sierra Leone Civil war. People were beheaded or killed in other ways and their bodies thrown into a pit called "Savage Pit" after the name of the AFRC commando who headed the massacre. There is a memorial in the town containing the bones of people locked in a house and burned to death.

References

Populated places in Sierra Leone Eastern Province, Sierra Leone {{SierraLeone-geo-stub