Evacuation flights from coup-hit Niger reach France
France receives evacuees from Niger, which has been rocked by a coup. As a result of the anti-French demonstrations that were sparked by the coup, the French government announced on Tuesday that its citizens would be withdrawn from Niamey, the capital city.
NIAMEY: A week after a coup ousted one of the last pro-Western leaders in the jihadist-infested Sahel, the first planes transporting French and other European citizens evacuated from Niger landed in Paris on Wednesday.
In a third coup in three years in the Sahel, following putsches in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, both former French colonies, President Mohamed Bazoum was detained by his own presidential guard.
West African leaders have imposed financial penalties on the junta and threatened to use force to restore the democratically elected Bazoum.
From Wednesday through Friday, the military leaders of the important regional bloc ECOWAS will meet in Abuja, Nigeria, to discuss the overthrow.
Following anti-French demonstrations sparked by the coup, Paris announced on Tuesday that it would remove its citizens from the nation’s capital Niamey.
By early Wednesday, about 500 individuals had arrived in Paris, the majority of them French nationals but also evacuees from Portugal, Belgium, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Lebanon.
Bernard, an EU employee in Niger for two months, described the evacuation as “well organised, it was fairly quick, and for me everything went well.”
“In Niamey, there are no particular tensions in the city, no particular stress, people go about their business,” he claimed.
ANSA radio said that 36 Italians and 21 Americans were among the approximately 100 foreigners who had been evacuated from Niger and had landed in Rome early on Wednesday.
The United States, which has 1,100 troops stationed in Niger, has decided not to evacuate its citizens at this time despite Germany’s pleas for them to do so.
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