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Last of SA, Botswana troops leave

    JOHANNESBURG

    The last South African and Botswana soldiers stationed in Lesotho for a year to help rebuild the kingdom’s fractured army left the country Tuesday, news reports said on Wednesday.

    “Our task here was to help retrain the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) and over the year we have been here we have managed to retrain the five companies,” SADC team commander Colonel Teddington Nqapayi said on SABC television.

    The 2,000 foreign troops restored calm after an army mutiny which saw the army leadership flee the country and anti-government protests which threatened to bring down the government. The elections were scheduled to be held before May 16 but government recently said they would be postponed until 2001.

    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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