Evacuation flights from coup-hit Niger reach France

The first planes carrying French and other European citizens evacuated from Niger landed in Paris on Wednesday, a week after a coup toppled one of the last pro-Western leaders in the jihadist-plagued Sahel.

President Mohamed Bazoum was detained by his own presidential guard in a third coup in three years in the Sahel, following putsches in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso, also former French colonies.

West African leaders have threatened to use force to reinstate the democratically elected Bazoum and slapped financial sanctions on the junta.

The military chiefs for nations in the key regional bloc ECOWAS will meet in the Nigerian capital Abuja from Wednesday to Friday to discuss the overthrow.

After anti-French protests unleashed by the coup, Paris on Tuesday said it would withdraw its nationals from the capital Niamey.

Evacuees arrive in Paris

By early on Wednesday, nearly 500 people had landed in Paris, including mostly French citizens but also Portuguese, Belgians, Nigerians, Ethiopians and Lebanese evacuees.

The evacuation was "well organised, it was fairly quick, for me everything went well", said Bernard, who had been working in Niger for the European Union for two months.

"In Niamey, there are no particular tensions in the city, no particular stress, people go about their business," he said.

Italian authorities also said they had evacuated around 100 foreigners living in Niger, who arrived in Rome early Wednesday, with ANSA radio reporting they included 36 Italians and 21 Americans.

Germany has urged its citizens to leave, but the United States – which has 1,100 troops stationed in Niger – has opted to not evacuate Americans for now.

'No military pullout'

The coup has sounded alarm bells in France, Niger's former colonial master and traditional ally.

Paris blamed the evacuation on the "violence that took place against our embassy" and the risk of "closure of the airspace that would leave our compatriots without the possibility to leave".

The Niger junta, however, announced late Tuesday that it had reopened the country's land and air borders with five neighbouring countries.

It is the first time that France has staged a large-scale evacuation in its former colonies in the Sahel.

However, France's army chief of staff announced that a pullout of Paris's 1,500 troops in Niger was "not on the agenda".

On Sunday the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) slapped sanctions on Niger and warned it may use force as it gave the coup leaders a week to reinstate Bazoum.

The following day, the junta accused France of seeking to "intervene militarily", which France denied, while junta-ruled Mali and Burkina Faso warned any military intervention in Niger would be a "declaration of war" against them.

A delegation from the West African bloc led by former Nigerian president Abdulsalami Abubakar is due to visit Niger on Wednesday.

Unstable nation

The dramatic events are unfolding in one of the world's poorest and most unstable countries -- a vast semi-desert nation that had already experienced four coups since independence in 1960.

The coup has worried Western countries against a backdrop of a jihadist insurgency that flared in northern Mali in 2012, advanced into Niger and Burkina Faso three years later and now overshadows fragile states on the Gulf of Guinea.

Countless numbers of civilians, troops and police have been killed across the region, many in ruthless massacres, while around 2.2 million people in Burkina Faso alone have fled their homes. The economic damage has been devastating.

France at one point had about 5,400 troops in its anti-jihadist Barkhane mission across the Sahel, supported by fighter jets, helicopters and drones.

In all three Sahel countries, the disgruntled military intervened against elected presidents as the toll mounted from jihadist attacks.

Bazoum was feted in 2021 after winning elections that ushered in Niger's first-ever peaceful transition of power.

But his tenure was already marked by two attempted coups before last week's dramatic events, in which he was detained by members of the elite Presidential Guard.

Guards chief General Abdourahamane Tiani has declared himself leader – but his claim has been rejected internationally.