Last batch of peacekeepers leave Ethiopia

VOA News

Peacekeeping units from Jordan, Kenya and other countries began leaving Ethiopia in August. The state-run Ethiopian News Agency Monday said the last batch of peacekeepers, a battalion from India, left the city of Mekele on Sunday.

There was no immediate confirmation from the U.N.

The U.N. Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea watched the tense border between the two countries for seven and a half years. The Security Council shut down the mission in July, saying the countries had rejected options for a continued presence.

The U.N. withdrew its peacekeepers from Eritrea in February, after Eritrea stopped the mission’s supply of diesel fuel and threatened to shut down its electricity.

Ethiopia Woyanne and Eritrea have yet to resolve their boundary dispute, which spawned a war from 1998 to 2000 that killed some 70,000 people. Both countries have large numbers of troops on the border, although no new hostilities have broken out.