The last Spanish soldiers yesterday pulled out of their former base in the town of Diwaniyah, southern Iraq, and were expected to cross the border into neighboring Kuwait within hours, Spanish national radio station RNE reported.
Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who came to power in a surprise election upset in March, is fulfilling a campaign pledge to pull his country's forces from Iraq.
The bulk of the Spanish contingent, originally of 1,430 troops, left the war-torn country on April 28.
Only a small number of troops handling the withdrawal remained in the country.
Spanish soldiers finished withdrawing from their main base in the southern Shiite Muslim holy city of Najaf on April 27.
Spanish forces transferred operations at Diwaniyah to US forces last Sunday.
Satisfied
Zapatero said last week he was glad that he decided to withdraw his country's troops from Iraq.
He said this was especially true now given the upsurge in violence by insurgents and the scandal involving abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of coalition soldiers.
Speaking to parliament, Zapatero said the pullout "is a decision with which I am increasingly satisfied for having made it when I did."
The new government's first announcement after coming to power was that it would pull out Spanish soldiers serving in Iraq unless the UN took political and military control of the troubled country on June 30.
This is the scheduled date for the US-led coalition to transfer power to an Iraqi-led administration.
Having concluded that such a UN role was not in the offing, Zapatero announced on April 18 that he had decided to pull out the Spanish contingent "as soon as possible."
Spain's decision dented the US-led coalition, with Honduras and the Dominican Republic following Madrid's lead and also moving to pull out their troops.
Washington has so far not found any country willing to contribute new troops to replace the departing Spanish and Latin American soldiers.
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