Commercial flights to and from La Tontouta international airport, in New Caledonia, will partially resume from Wednesday (AFP/Archives/Ludovic MARIN)
Commercial flights to and from La Tontouta international airport, in New Caledonia, will partially resume from Wednesday, illustrating the slow return to calm on the archipelago despite the persistence of numerous blocking points for the separatists.
“Starting tomorrow, Wednesday June 5, Aircalin will gradually resume part of its long and medium-haul commercial flights,” the local airline announced on Tuesday, information confirmed to AFP by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry from New Caledonia, platform manager.
This “partial resumption” concerns a “lightened flight program which will remain in force until a return to a normal situation”, however specifies Aircalin.
Among the difficulties are the curfew in force at least until June 10 and the situation on the RT1 road from Nouméa to the airport, which was one of the main hotspots of the riots and remains difficult to pass. .
As the terminal is still not accessible from the south of New Caledonia, an air bridge will be set up to transport passengers and their luggage between La Tontouta and the Magenta aerodrome, located in the district of the same name in Nouméa, specifies the airline.
The situation in the Oceanic territory, which has been in the grip of its most serious crisis since the 1980s since May 13, has improved since the end of May but numerous dams continue to dot the territory. The authorities dismantle them every day; some are then reconstituted immediately, slowing down the return to normal.
The riots, triggered by the vote in Paris for a reform of the electoral body accused by the separatists of marginalizing the indigenous Kanak population, led to the death of seven people including two gendarmes, and to the blocking of numerous roads on the big island.
– Trapped manhole –
Nouméa international airport has been closed since the start of the riots. The first flights affected by the resumption of traffic on Wednesday are a flight from Papeete via Nandi, Fiji, and a flight to Brisbane (Australia) in the evening.
At the Col de la Pirogue, on the road leading from Nouméa to the airport located 50 kilometers north of the city, independence activists replaced roadblocks on Monday at the location where two men were injured in an exchange of gunfire with the gendarmerie, telling motorists to turn around, noted an AFP journalist.
On Tuesday, a long convoy of gendarmes moved to escort the clearing operations but they had barely left when the activists placed stones, branches and scrap metal across the road.
Testimony to the still precarious security conditions, a gendarme was injured “in the legs” by falling into a “trapped sewer manhole” in Dumbéa, near Nouméa, announced Wednesday the public prosecutor in the territory, Yves Dupas .
The gendarme fell into the manhole while walking on branches placed “on top in order to hide the opening” of the manhole, which had been removed, he indicated: “From a depth of 1m20, concrete scrap 2mm in diameter were positioned vertically at the bottom to create piles.
In total, 191 gendarmes and police officers have been injured “since the start of the disturbances to public order”, recalled the High Commission of the Republic in New Caledonia in its daily update on the situation in the archipelago.
On the political level, leaders of the moderate non-independence party Caledonia Ensemble estimated on Tuesday that Emmanuel Macron should “officially record the end of the procedure for the constitutional reform project” of the electoral body, essential according to them to put an end to the unrest.
This is a “prerequisite” while “the State fails to restore order”, said Philippe Gomès, one of the leaders of Caledonia together, at a press conference.
The head of state has so far only indicated that there would be “no forced passage” but no “turn back” either. On Tuesday, the FLNKS, the main platform of independence parties, also asked Emmanuel Macron to explicitly renounce the adoption of electoral reform.
© 2024 AFP
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