Sébastien Le Belzic and Guillaume Dominguez // Photo credit: AFP
modified to
09:04, August 02, 2023
A first plane took off Tuesday from the military base in Niamey, Niger, with several hundred French and European nationals on board. All forced to leave everything in a hurry to return to France, some of them deliver their feelings to the microphone of Europe 1.
It all happened in less than ten hours. Tuesday morning, the French Embassy in Niger decided to launch the protocol for the evacuation of nationals, judging the situation too dangerous in the country after the anti-French demonstrations which have followed one another since the coup d’etat last Thursday.
In the middle of the morning, all the expatriates received a message inviting the volunteers to go to the capital’s airport at 2 p.m. At the time of the appointment, a long queue was created in front of the terminal, under the surveillance of the French army.
“Many had tears in their eyes”
“There are a lot of French people, Germans, Spaniards and Italians. Families with children. Many had tears in their eyes. I have spoken with a few who tell me that it is sad to have left rushed to Niger in these conditions. Abandoned everything behind them without wanting to,” laments Omar Hama, an independent journalist present on the spot.
A decision accepted reluctantly by many French people. For Patrick, who has lived in Niamey for more than a decade, security takes precedence over everything else. “I think it’s a good solution given that the situation is very volatile here at the moment in Niger, and to protect the physical integrity of nationals, it is preferable to leave the territory,” he explains.
A total of three planes have so far been chartered by the French army to evacuate European nationals present in Niger.