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ABIDJAN, May 19, 2024 (AFP) – With the US troop withdrawal from military-led Niger underway and due to be over by September 15, Washington is preparing to abandon its strategic position in the Sahel where Russia and Iran are gaining ground. The demand for US troops to exit came after French soldiers were also given their marching orders last year by Niger’s new ruling generals following a July coup. Niger announced in March it was […]
ABIDJAN, May 6, 2024 (AFP) – The number of people suffering from “severe” food insecurity in the military-ruled Sahel nations of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has jumped to 7.5 million people, the US International Rescue Committee (IRC) warned on Monday. “The magnitude of severe food insecurity and related malnutrition continues to intensify in the region,” said the group that helps those facing conflict and disaster. “In the Central Sahel alone (Burkina Faso, Mali […]
NIAMEY, Niger, Oct 20, 2023 (AFP) – Niger’s military rulers said they had foiled an attempt by Mohamed Bazoum, the former president they ousted in a coup in July, to escape their custody on Thursday. “At around three in the morning, the ousted president Mohamed Bazoum and his family, his two cooks and two security elements, tried to escape from his place of detention,” the regime’s spokesman Amadou Abdramane said on state television. The escape […]
NIAMEY, Niger, Aug 11, 2023 (AFP) – Fears for Niger’s detained president mounted on Friday, a day after West African leaders declared they would muster a “standby” force in their efforts to return him to power. The European Union and African Union joined the United States and other voices in sounding the alarm for democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, who was ousted by members of his guard on July 26. “Bazoum and his family, according […]
NIAMEY, Niger, Aug 8, 2023 (AFP) – The second-ranking US diplomat met Niger’s military leaders on Monday to press to reverse a coup but reported no headway a day after an ultimatum from the West African bloc was ignored. Victoria Nuland, a veteran envoy and acting deputy secretary of state, said she met for more than two hours with military chiefs who ousted democratically elected Western ally Mohamed Bazoum on July 26. Nuland’s trip, conducted […]
NIAMEY, Aug 7, 2023 (AFP) – Niger closed its airspace due to the “threat of intervention” as the junta defied a deadline from the West African bloc ECOWAS to reinstate democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum or face possible military action. ECOWAS issued its ultimatum a week ago, demanding the generals relinquish power by midnight Sunday (2300 GMT). Bazoum was overthrown on July 26 when members of his own guard detained him at the presidency. “Faced […]
WASHINGTON, Aug 2, 2023 (AFP) – The United States on Wednesday ordered a partial evacuation of its embassy in Niger, the State Department said, a week after the fragile nation was rocked by a coup. “On August 2, 2023, the Department ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government employees and eligible family members from Embassy Niamey,” an updated US travel advisory for Niger said. The advisory warned US citizens “not to travel to Niger,” but […]
By Boureima HAMA Agence France-Presse NIAMEY, Niger (AFP) — The first of three planes carrying mostly French and European people evacuated from Niger landed in Paris early Wednesday, a week after a coup toppled one of the last pro-Western leaders in the jihadist-plagued Sahel. “There are 262 people on board the plane, an Airbus A330, including a dozen babies,” French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told AFP before the flight landed at Paris Roissy Charles de […]
ABUJA, July 30, 2023 (AFP) – African leaders on Sunday gave the junta in Niger one week to cede power or face the possible use of force, and slapped financial sanctions on the putschists, after the latest coup in the jihadist-plagued Sahel region raised alarm on the continent and in the West. In the third coup in as many years to fell a leader in the Sahel, Niger’s elected president and Western ally, Mohamed Bazoum, […]
NIAMEY, July 28, 2023 (AFP) – Niger’s putschists named an army general as the new leader of the unstable jihadist-hit nation on Friday, the third day since elected President Mohamed Bazoum was detained. Former colonial master France said hours earlier that it did not consider the coup “final”, adding there was time for plotters to heed international calls to leave democratically-elected Bazoum in office. But General Abdourahamane Tchiani, head of the Presidential Guard since 2011, […]
By Camille LAFFONT Agence France-Presse BILMA, Niger, June 9, 2023 (AFP) — At the edge of an oasis almost engulfed by the dunes, where the rare caravan still passes, is a desert landscape punctured by holes. The salt pans of Kalala, near Bilma in northeastern Niger, were once an essential stop for traders with their swaying lines of camels. Salt digging, carried on from generation to generation, was a thriving business, involving a commodity so […]
by Delphine TOUITOU with Camille LAFFONT in Niamey French journalist Olivier Dubois, 48, made an emotional return home on Tuesday following nearly two years in captivity in the Sahel, greeted by his family and President Emmanuel Macron at an airport near Paris. Dubois and 61-year-old US aid worker Jeffery Woodke, who was seized in southwest Niger in October 2016 — arrived in the Niger capital, Niamey, on Monday after being freed. Dubois stepped off […]
