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Niger Crisis Deepens as European Nations Evacuate

Italian nationals and other European and American citizens, who have been evacuated from Niger, days after a junta seized power in the west African country, arrive at Ciampino Airport, near Rome, Italy, August 2, 2023. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Italian nationals and other European and American citizens, who have been evacuated from Niger, days after a junta seized power in the west African country, arrive at Ciampino Airport, near Rome, Italy, August 2, 2023. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
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Niger Crisis Deepens as European Nations Evacuate

Italian nationals and other European and American citizens, who have been evacuated from Niger, days after a junta seized power in the west African country, arrive at Ciampino Airport, near Rome, Italy, August 2, 2023. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Italian nationals and other European and American citizens, who have been evacuated from Niger, days after a junta seized power in the west African country, arrive at Ciampino Airport, near Rome, Italy, August 2, 2023. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

A French military transport plane carrying Europeans from Niger arrived in Paris Wednesday, in the first such evacuation flight since mutinous soldiers ousted the country’s democratically elected president nearly a week ago and shut its borders.
France, Italy and Spain all announced evacuations from Niger for their citizens and other European nationals, concerned that they risked becoming trapped by the coup.
About 600 French nationals want to leave, along with 400 people of other nationalities from Belgians to Danish, French officials said. The first flight carried mostly French nationals, and officials hope to finish the evacuation flights by Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.
With Niger's air space closed, France coordinated the evacuations with the regime that ousted the nation's leader, but without withdrawing its support for democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, diplomatic officials said.
The ministry cited recent violence that targeted its embassy in Niamey, the capital, as one of the reasons for its decision to offer evacuation flights to its citizens and other Europeans. Spain's Defense Ministry announced preparations to evacuate more than 70 nationals, and Italy also said it was arranging a flight.
The evacuations come during a deepening crisis sparked by the coup last week against Bazoum. His apparent overthrow is a blow for Western nations that were working with Niger against West African extremists.
In Niamey hotels, Europeans and other nationalities, including some Americans, packed bags. At the airport, hundreds of people lined up for hours waiting to leave on French evacuation flights.
The West African regional body known as ECOWAS announced travel and economic sanctions against Niger on Sunday and said it could use force if coup leaders don’t reinstate Bazoum within one week.
The UN special envoy for West Africa and the Sahel, Leonardo Santos Simão, held out hope that bloodshed could be avoided.
He said during a virtual news conference Tuesday he expects ECOWAS to go ahead with the deployment of troops to Niger if Bazoum isn’t restored to power. But “I believe that other efforts are underway, so I hope the use of force will not be necessary,” if "everybody talks in good faith (and) wants to avoid bloodshed.”
The evacuations followed violence Sunday that targeted the French Embassy, with protesters burning down a door and smashing windows before the Nigerien army dispersed them. Thousands of pro-junta supporters took to Niamey’s streets. Some waved Russian flags along with signs reading “Down with France” and supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin and telling the international community to stay away.

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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.