OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maseru | THURSDAY 11.00PM.
SOLDIERS of the Lesotho defence force and Lesotho police shot at each other with automatic weapons outside the palace of King Letsie III early on Thursday evening, killing one civilian.
Witnesses said they saw a man’s body being taken into Maseru’s Queen Elizabeth II hospital, followed by 16 injured people. Some of the injured were seriously wounded and most were bleeding heavily from their legs and feet.
The gunfire sent a crowd of 500 people, protesting the results of the country’s May elections, scurrying for cover behind the palace wall. Gunfire was first heard around 5pm and continued intermittently for three hours.
Witnesses said it appeared soldiers guarding the palace fired on police after they opened fire on the protesters, who were gathered at the palace main gate.
Thefele M’aseribane, the leader of the opposition Basutho National Party Youth League, who has helped organise and sustain protests at the palace in past weeks, told reporters it was him the police were after. He claimed police followed his car into Maseru on Thursday afternoon and tried to force him off the road, but he gave them the slip and fled to the palace.
The police followed and fired “indiscriminately” at the crowd into which he had disappeared, M’aseribane said.
A military officer told reporters that when the soldiers heard the shooting, they opened the gates for the crowd so that they could escape into the palace grounds, before returning fire on the police.
Lesotho has been volatile since August 4 when the country’s opposition parties began mass protests against the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy’s victory in the May elections.
Following the Langa commission’s investigation into electoral fraud, the results of which have not yet been made public, Lesotho opposition parties have claimed that evidence has been found of “massive tampering” with ballot boxes and papers, and of flaws in the electoral process as a whole. They have demanded the election be declared null and void.
The Lesotho government has countered the commission found no evidence of fraud.