BUJUMBURA (AFP) – South Africa’s soldiers in the African Union peacekeeping mission in Burundi have left the country, the African Union said Thursday.
The group of around 110 soldiers were responsible for protecting leaders from the ex-rebel group the National Liberation Forces (FNL), while training a newly created FNL-national army coalition, which has now taken over from the AU.
“The last South African soldiers from the African Union Special Task Force still operating in Burundi completed their mission Wednesday morning and left the country for good to return to South Africa,” said Mamadou Bah, AU special representative in Burundi.
Burundi and the FNL, the country’s last active rebel group, agreed a ceasefire in 2006.
In April 2009, the FNL became a political party and its fighters joined the national army.
The central African country is still struggling to emerge from its civil war, which began in 1993, mainly pitting rebels from the Hutu majority population against the Tutsi minority, which at the time dominated the army.
Some 300,000 people were killed in the conflict.
