GABORONE: Ten footballers from Eritrea’s national squad are seeking political asylum in Botswana, where on Tuesday they played in a qualifier for the 2018 World Cup, an Eritrean non-governmental organisation said Thursday.

“About 10 football players from the country declined to board a plane home ... (Wednesday) morning, stating that they needed political asylum,” said Dick Bayford, a human rights lawyer representing the Pretoria-based Eritrean Movement for Democracy and Human Rights.