French forces smashed through about 60 road blocks to clear the way from conflict-stricken New Caledonia\u2019s capital to the airport but have still not reopened the route, a top government official said Sunday.
\nAnd after six nights of violence that has left six dead and hundreds injured, security forces will launch \u201charassment\u201d raids to reclaim other parts of the Pacific territory, the French government representative in New Caledonia, Louis Le Franc, said in a televised address.
\nThe Pacific archipelago of 270,000 people has been convulsed by unrest since Monday, sparked by French plans to impose new voting rules that would give tens of thousands of non-indigenous residents voting rights.
\nThe territory has long suffered from ethnic tensions and opposition to French rule by Kanak groups.
\nAuthorities said 600 heavily armed police took part in an operation Sunday to retake the 60-kilometre (40-mile) main road from Noumea to the airport that has been closed to commercial flights since the unrest erupted.
\nThe local government estimates around 3,200 people are either stuck in New Caledonia or unable to return there from abroad since flights have been cancelled.
\nAustralia and New Zealand have been pressing France for clearance to launch evacuation flights for their citizens.
\nLe Franc said about 60 roadblocks put up by pro-independence groups had been \u201cbroken through\u201d without violence.
\nBut the official added that the route was full of wrecks of cars, burned wood and metal which had only been cleared at 15 of the roadblocks. Le Franc said the road was also damaged in several places.
\nLe Franc said police units would launch \u201charassment operations\u201d in coming hours to retake \u201chardcore\u201d areas in Noumea and the towns of Dumbea and Paita.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French forces smashed through about 60 road blocks to clear the way from conflict-stricken New Caledonia\u2019s capital to the airport but have still not reopened the route, a top government official said Sunday. And after six nights of violence that has left six dead and hundreds injured, security forces will launch \u201charassment\u201d raids to reclaim …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22385,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22380\/revisions\/22385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}