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SADC troops to leave

Some 250 South African and Botswana soldiers stationed in Lesotho to help rebuild the Kingdom’s fractured army are to leave the country within days, Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili said on Thursday. Mosisili told the national assembly the military instructors - known as the Southern African Development Community Training Team in Lesotho - had “accomplished their mission to restructure and retrain the Lesotho Defence Force”. He said the soldiers would all be withdrawn before the end of this month. The instructors were sent to Lesotho in May last year, following the withdrawal of some 2,000 troops from South Africa and Botswana sent to quell massive political unrest in September 1998.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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