ARMY troops from East Lancashire are too busy away from home this Easter to tuck in to chocolate Easter eggs.

Four soldiers from the Royal Artillery, Royal Army Medical Corps and Royal Engineering Corps will be concentrating on community and aid work instead.

Former St Bedes RC High School pupil, private Lisa Southworth, 24, and lance corporal Kevin Coulson, 32, former Moorhead High School pupil in Accrington, are both working with the Medical Corps in Bosnia serving with NATO troops as part of a peacekeeping mission.

Also serving in Bosnia with the 127 Battery, 26 Regiment of the Royal Artillery, is 24-year-old lance bombardier Gareth Fetigan who attended St Theodores School in Burnley. Gareth worked for Kwik Fit before joining the army in 1998.

Accrington sapper Gareth Read, 26, will be spending Easter festival at the 39 Engineer Regiment in Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, after returning from Gibraltar days earlier.

Gareth, who worked for TNT as a Forklift Truck driver before joining the forces, has been working with a 70-strong team to build six garages and construct a safety fence along the southern cliff of Gibraltar.

Gareth said: "I was getting bored doing the same job every day so I joined the army to get more experience of life.

"This task was simple but very physical. Once the foundations were down the rest of the work was relatively easy, but working in the heat was really tiring."

The NATO led peacekeeping Stabilisation Force in Bosnia is an extensive programme of building to replace houses and businesses destroyed during the conflict. The role of the soldiers is to offer humanitarian relief and reassurance to civilians.