Two policemen in Lesotho were wounded Tuesday night during a shootout between the force and the military, police said, in the latest fall-out from the attempted coup a month ago.

Lesotho Mounted Police Service spokesman Lebona Mohloboli confirmed to AFP that "two police officers (were) shot and injured."

South Africa hosted an emergency meeting of regional leaders to negotiate a peace deal for Lesotho on Monday, following an attempted coup and stalled peace talks between deadlocked political parties. 

South African President Jacob Zuma and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe -- chairman of the 15-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) -- will sit down with Lesotho's leaders to hash out a solution after rival party leaders failed to patch up their differences.

Lesotho's embattled prime minister, who fled to South Africa at the weekend after an apparent bid to oust him, returned safely to his home country on Wednesday, an aide said.

Prime Minister Tom Thabane "has crossed into the country," his advisor Samonyane Ntsekele told AFP, speaking on the phone from the premier's official residence. "He got in safely."

Lesotho's exiled prime minister delayed a planned return on Tuesday to his country as gunfights rekindled tensions in the tiny mountain kingdom after an apparent coup.

Aides to Tom Thabane told AFP that security concerns could delay plans for the embattled 75-year-old to return to the mountain kingdom from neighboring South Africa.

Lesotho's exiled prime minister is heading home, and aide told Agence France-Presse on Monday, as regional mediators sought to reinstall him to power days after an apparent coup. 

"We are going home now, most probably we will be in Lesotho tomorrow," Samonyane Ntsekele, an adviser to Prime Minister Tom Thabane, said from Pretoria, where southern African states brokered a deal to end the crisis.

Lesotho's exiled premier on Monday called on the southern African regional bloc SADC to send peacekeeping troops to his country, after claiming that the army had seized power in a coup.

Tom Thabane had fled to South Africa in fear of his life on Saturday. In his absence, a political rival told AFP on Monday that he had now taken over as acting prime minister of the tiny mountain kingdom.

The attempted assassination of a top military commander plunged Lesotho into further turmoil Sunday, following an apparent coup that forced the prime minister to flee to neighboring South Africa.

Gunmen attacked the Maseru home of Lieutenant General Maaparankoe Mahao, district police commissioner Mofokeng Kolo confirmed, deepening a seeming battle for control of the military.

Lesotho Prime Minister Tom Thabane claimed Saturday he fled in fear of his life after soldiers seized power in a coup, despite the military denying it overthrew the tiny mountain kingdom's government.

Powerful neighbor South Africa and the Commonwealth backed Thabane's claims, with Johannesburg warning the Basotho army that such action "shall not be tolerated".