JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s president said today that the prime minister of neighboring Lesotho was the target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
In a statement, South African President Kgalema Motlantha said Lesotho Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili had survived the attack at his home in Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, earlier in the day.
The South African Press Association said that privately owned Harvest FM was reporting that three men were killed in a gunfight with police when a group of heavily armed men stormed the prime minister’s residence.
The press association quoted the broadcaster as saying one of the men killed was a member of the Lesotho defense force.
Some of the attackers managed to escape, but a South African and a Mozambican national were arrested and a number of weapons were seized, the report said.
Mosisili, 64, was elected as Lesotho leader in 1998, and was re-elected in 2007.
The former British colony — a tiny country of 2 million people, surrounded by South Africa — has a history of coups and political unrest. It is among Africa’s poorest countries, and suffers among the world’s highest AIDS rates.
Motlanthe is president of the Southern African Development Community and he said the community “condemns without equivocation the attempted assassination of the democratically elected prime minister of Lesotho.”
“It is the firm view of the region that no cause can ever justify such heinous acts,” he said.
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