Taipei, Aug. 10 (CNA) Two Taiwan nationals are preparing to leave Niger in the wake of a military coup that has plunged the West African nation into a political crisis and rattled the region, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said Thursday.
The two Taiwanese, who worked in Niger, are “safe” and will leave the African nation “very soon” with the help of Taiwan’s representative office in France, Anthony Ho (賀忠義), head of MOFA’s Department of West Asian and African Affairs, told a press briefing in Taipei.
However, Ho declined to specify when the two nationals would leave Niger, saying only that the foreign ministry will make an announcement after they depart the country.
The representative office, which also handles affairs in other African territories where Taiwan has no representation, remains in close contact with the two individuals, he said, while urging Taiwanese to refrain from traveling to Niger.
MOFA had said no known Taiwan nationals were in the West African nation shortly after Niger’s military junta launched a coup and ousted President Mohamed Bazoum on July 26.
According to Ho, the representative office later learned about the activities of the two nationals in Niger and contacted them.
The coup by the Niger’s military has been widely condemned by the African Union, the West African regional bloc known as ECOWAS, and the United Nations, which have called for the reinstatement of the ousted president, according to the Associated Press.
In the meantime, France, Italy and other European countries have evacuated their nationals from Niger, the report said.
The coup is the fifth in the landlocked country since it gained independence from France in 1960, and the sixth in West Africa in three years, resurrecting the moniker “coup belt” for the the Greater Sahel region, one of the world’s most unstable areas in recent years.
