About a hundred French citizens waited outside Niamey’s Diori Hamadi International Airport at noon on Tuesday to board the first organized flight to leave the country. Niger after the coup to overthrow the elected pro-Western government of Mohamad Bazum.
According to AFP, the French are the only travelers at the airport. They arrived there by private means, holding only a small rucksack, as requested by the consulate of his country that informed them at dawn of the evacuation operation, a week after the coup in Niger.
There are also police officers from Niger and about 20 French soldiers, in uniform or civilian clothes, who clarified that boarding will be done according to the rules observed “in classic airports”.
The first Niamey-bound plane took off from Paris after noon on Tuesday. About 600 French citizens are currently in Niger. The French government was unable to specify whether the operation to remove them will last several days, because it does not yet know how many of them will want to leave the country.
France, the former colonial power in the region, which backs Niger’s ousted president Mohamad Bazoum, appears to be the main target of the military coup plotters. Thousands of protesters, close to the military, gathered outside the country’s embassy in Niamey on Sunday while the junta accuses Paris of wanting to intervene militarily in the country.
Both the Germans and the Italians leave
After the France and Germany’s foreign ministry has called on German citizens in Niger to leave the country in the context of the evacuation operation organized by the French authorities for their own nationals, from the capital Niamey. “The highest priority is the safety of German citizens,” said the foreign minister.
“We can confirm that our French colleagues have offered, within the limits of their capabilities, to accept German citizens on their flights from Niger,” said a representative of the German Foreign Ministry a while ago.
“Right now the highest priority of the federal government is of course the safety of Germans in the country. As in previous crises, we are coordinating this closely with France and other European partners,” Foreign Minister Analena Burbock wrote on Twitter a while ago.
Italy has also announced the evacuation of its citizens, with a special flight from Niamey.
Source: News Beast
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