NIAMEY (Reuters) – Niger announced overnight that it was reopening its borders with several of its neighbours, a week after a coup that has sent shockwaves across West Africa’s Sahel region, one of the poorest and most unstable in the world.
“The land and air borders with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Libya and Chad are re-opened from today, August 1, 2023,” junta spokesperson Colonel Amadou Abdramane said in a televised address.
The junta closed the borders last Wednesday, at the same time that it announced that it had removed democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum from power.
Regional bloc ECOWAS has imposed sanctions, including a halt in all financial transactions and a national assets freeze, and said it could authorize force to reinstate Bazoum.
But the juntas of neighbouring Burkina Faso and Mali voiced their support for the coup’s leaders and said any outside intervention to restore the ousted government would be seen as a declaration of war.
That declaration by Mali and Burkina Faso on Monday night suggested a new alliance may be forming in opposition to the rest of the 15-member-state bloc.
Meanwhile, the first military planes carrying mostly European nationals evacuated from Niger landed in Paris and Rome on Wednesday.
“Things could have turned ugly but it still is nice to be back here,” a French evacuee who gave his name as Charles told Reuters TV.
“We will see how things evolve over there in the coming days and weeks. For us, who care about it quite a lot, we will follow this closely,” he said.
(Reporting by Christophe Van Der Perre, Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Alex Richardson)
