A community in Sierra Leone has taken a diamond mining company to court.

Residents of Koidu say the government failed to protect them, when it handed over their land to Octea mining company.

While some families have been moved to alternative accommodation, hundreds more vow to fight their eviction.

For decates artisanal diamond miners lived off the land in Sierra Leone’s Corro district, until the arrival of multinational mining companies.

Reports say in the shadow of the biggest mining firms in Sierra Leone, these workers lay by in the pits in the hope of getting diamonds and they fail.

The government handed their land to Octea Mining Company to expand its operations, and residents complain that they were not even allowed to pack their backs.

They say rocks and water were set to destroy their houses, and now their clothes and everything they had are buried in the debris.