French President Emmanuel Macron will visit riot-hit New Caledonia, Paris said Tuesday, as tourists are evacuated from the Pacific territory that has suffered over a week of unrest.
\nMacron \u201cwill leave as soon as this evening,\u201d government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot said, hoping to soothe tempers over his government\u2019s voting reform plans rejected by indigenous Kanaks.
\nEarlier Tuesday an Australian Air Force transport aircraft evacuated trapped tourists from a small domestic airport in New Caledonia\u2019s capital Noumea, as separatist roadblocks still hinder access to the international hub.
\nAustralia and New Zealand sent an initial batch of planes to Noumea Magenta airport, where the first Australian C-130 Hercules aircraft land and several coaches waiting.
\n\u201cPassengers are being prioritized based on need. We continue to work on further flights,\u201d Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on social media, announcing two initial flights.
\nThe first transport with evacuees landed in Brisbane in eastern Australia around 7:00 pm (0900 GMT) Tuesday.
\nA second C-130 was slated to land in Auckland, New Zealand around 1000 GMT, with Foreign Minister Winston Peters saying it would bring \u201c50 passengers with the most pressing needs\u201d and promising \u201csubsequent flights in coming days.\u201d
\nAustralian tourist Maxwell Winchester said he and his wife Tiffany were \u201cecstatic\u201d to hear evacuation flights had begun after being stuck in a barricaded resort for a week.
\nCharles Roger, director of New Caledonia\u2019s Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) which operates Noumea\u2019s larger La Tontouta international airport, said that there would be no commercial flights there until Saturday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French President Emmanuel Macron will visit riot-hit New Caledonia, Paris said Tuesday, as tourists are evacuated from the Pacific territory that has suffered over a week of unrest. Macron \u201cwill leave as soon as this evening,\u201d government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot said, hoping to soothe tempers over his government\u2019s voting reform plans rejected by indigenous Kanaks. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22600","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\/22600","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=22600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22606,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22600\/revisions\/22606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}