Eswatini Soldiers Shot Two U.S. Government Workers at a Military Roadblock After Their Car Made a U-Turn. The Army Thought It Was Smugglers. The State Department Says They Are Safe.

Soldiers in the southern African kingdom of Eswatini shot and wounded two U.S. government employees last week after their vehicle turned around near a military roadblock, the country's government said in a statement late Monday.

The shooting took place late Friday in the Maphiveni area of the Lubombo region, in the rural northeast of the country near the Mozambican border, during an army operation against smuggling. The Americans sustained "minor injuries," government spokesperson Thabile Mdluli told The Associated Press on Tuesday, and an investigation is underway. The government did not name the two Americans or say why they were in the area.

Army sources told the independent outlet Swaziland News that at least one of the two was a U.S. diplomat. According to that account, soldiers on duty at the roadblock saw a car make a U-turn next to the checkpoint, assumed the driver was a smuggler trying to avoid inspection, and opened fire. They did not know an American diplomat was behind the wheel.

The U.S. State Department said it was aware of the shooting and that the "affected U.S. personnel are safe," and that it was working with the Eswatini government on the investigation. It, too, declined to identify the employees. Carly Van Orman, a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Mbabane, said in a statement to Swaziland News that the embassy was "in contact with the relevant authorities" and "working to establish the facts surrounding the incident." "The safety and well-being of U.S. citizens remain our highest priority," she said.

Eswatini's army spokesperson, Maj. Sandile Gwebu, told the AP the matter was now "a diplomatic issue" being handled by both governments and would not give further details. The government statement said the Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force had opened its own inquiry and that "the incident is being treated with the seriousness it warrants." It added that the kingdom remained committed to "preserving and strengthening its cordial and longstanding relations with the United States of America."

Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, is a landlocked country of about 1.3 million people wedged between South Africa and Mozambique. King Mswati III has ruled since 1986 and holds supreme political authority as Africa's last absolute monarch. Political parties are banned from contesting elections, and security forces killed dozens of people during pro-democracy protests in 2021.

The kingdom's relationship with Washington has drawn unusual attention over the past year. In 2025 the Trump administration began sending deportees who were not Eswatini citizens to be held in the country under an agreement whose terms were not made public, prompting protests in the kingdom. Neither government has said what the two Americans were doing in the Lubombo region on Friday night, or whether their work was connected to the army's operation.

The Lubombo region borders Mozambique, and the army's roadblocks there are aimed at cross-border smuggling. Whether the soldiers followed their orders, and whether those orders were adequate, is now the subject of parallel investigations in two capitals. Neither has said when it expects to report.