US troops held large military exercises in Honduras during the 1980s, and trained thousands of Salvadorans in the country.[15] The nation also hosted bases for the Nicaraguan Contras. In 1986, they began to see armed conflicts on the border with Nicaragua, which ended in the aerial bombardment of two Nicaraguan towns by the Honduran Air Force. By 1998, the Mitch hurricane left more than 2 million Hondurans without a home or job, a good portion of the infrastructure that was totally damaged, dragging Honduras into more poverty.