Two U.S. government officials were accidentally shot and wounded by Eswatini’s defence force during \u200ban anti-smuggling operation last week, the \u200cgovernment of the Southern African monarchy said.<\/p>\n
Acting government spokesperson Thabile Mdluli said in a statement late on Monday \u200bthat the officials were injured on \u200bFriday in the rural village of Maphiveni, \u2060about a two-hour drive from the capital, \u200bMbabane.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear what the U.S. \u200bpersonnel were doing in the area, but Mdluli said the army had launched an investigation into the circumstances \u200bsurrounding the incident.<\/p>\n
She added that Eswatini was \u200bin communication with the U.S. government as the investigation progressed \u200cand \u2060remained committed to strengthening its longstanding relationship with Washington.<\/p>\n
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Eswatini has maintained \u200bclose ties \u200bwith the \u2060U.S. under President\u00a0Donald Trump, with the kingdom receiving more than\u00a030 third-country \u200bdeportees.<\/p>\n
In total it has agreed to \u200bhost \u2060160 under a\u00a0$5.1 million agreement\u00a0that has been challenged by lawyers who say deportees are being \u2060detained \u200bdespite having already served sentences \u200bfor crimes committed in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two U.S. government officials were accidentally shot and wounded by Eswatini’s defence force during \u200ban anti-smuggling operation last week, the \u200cgovernment of the Southern African monarchy said. Acting government spokesperson Thabile Mdluli said in a statement late on Monday \u200bthat the officials were injured on \u200bFriday in the rural village of Maphiveni, \u2060about a two-hour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12499,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[344,5468,5467],"class_list":["post-22032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-eswatini","tag-maphiveni","tag-thabile-mdluli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22033,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22032\/revisions\/22033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}