Australia and New Zealand said they will send government planes to New Caledonia on Tuesday to evacuate nationals from the French territory which has experienced a week of deadly riots, sparked by electoral changes imposed by the French government in Paris.
Foreign minister Penny Wong confirmed Australia had received clearance for two flights after the international airport was shut down, and the government would “continue to work on further flights”.
New Zealand, French and Australian foreign ministers held a call on Monday evening, after New Zealand and Australia said they were waiting for clearance from French authorities to send defence aircraft to evacuate tourists.
A meeting of France’s defence council later agreed for arrangements to allow tourists to return home. Roughly 3,000 tourists are thought to be marooned in New Caledonia, according to AFP, including more than 300 Australians and nearly 250 New Zealanders.
In a statement, New Zealand foreign minister Winston Peters said a plane would head to New Caledonia early Tuesday afternoon.
Peters said the flight would carry about 50 passengers with the most pressing needs from Noumea to Auckland. It would be the first in a series of planned flights, he said.
“New Zealanders in New Caledonia have faced a challenging few days – and bringing them home has been an urgent priority for the government,” Peters said.
“We are ecstatic,” Australian tourist Maxwell Winchester told the AFP news agency. “Every night, we had to sleep with one eye open,” Winchester, who has been barricaded in a resort, told AFP. “Every noise, we were worried that they were coming in to loot us.”
The planned evacuation flights came as New Caledonia’s international airport remained closed, as protesters refused to abandon roadblocks that have paralysed the Pacific archipelago for a week – even as the French government insisted a major security operation was beginning to restore calm.
French president Emmanuel Macron told a meeting of his defence and security council on Monday evening that there was “clear progress in re-establishing order”.
But pro-independence largely indigenous Kanak activists vowed they would not give up, and AFP journalists said some roadblocks taken down by security forces were being rebuilt by pro-independence forces.
The latest unrest in the Pacific territory of 270,000 people erupted over French plans to impose new rules that would give tens of thousands of non-indigenous residents voting rights.
Indigenous Kanaks make up about 40% of the population but tend to be poorer. Kanak groups say the latest voting regulations would dilute their vote.
France has sent 1,000 security forces to its overseas territory, which has been rocked by seven nights of violence that have left six dead, including two gendarmes, and hundreds injured.
Some 600 heavily armed French police and paramilitaries destroyed 76 roadblocks on the 60km (40-mile) route between the capital, Nouméa, and La Tontouta International Airport, officials said.
Macron warned during Monday’s meeting that the military would need to remain deployed in New Caledonia “for some time”.
Amid the continuing unrest in the capital, anti-riot blast balls, often used to release teargas or pepper spray, could be heard in one Nouméa suburb.
A pickup truck drove through one Nouméa suburb with about 10 masked and hooded men wielding machetes, AFP correspondents said.
“It feels like being in The Walking Dead,” local post office director Thomas de Deckker told AFP, referring to the post-apocalyptic zombie television series.
Sonia Lagarde, the mayor of Nouméa, speaking to French daily Le Monde, said the approval of the changes by both houses of the French parliament should be postponed.
The government heads of four other French overseas territories – Réunion in the Indian Ocean, Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean and French Guiana in South America – on Sunday called for the voting changes to be withdrawn altogether to avoid “civil war”.
The New Caledonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) said on Monday that the troubles had caused “catastrophic” economic damage, with 150 businesses “looted and set on fire”.
Military aircraft carrying the remains of two gendarmes killed in New Caledonia landed in France early on Monday. “Their names were Nicolas Molinari and Xavier Salou,” French prime minister Gabriel Attal said on X. “The whole nation bows before their coffins.”
Paris has accused a group known as Ground Action coordination Cell, or CCAT, of being behind the riots.
CCAT said on Monday it was “maintaining” barricades that were in place. Some CCAT leaders are under house arrest on suspicion of organising the troubles.
Indigenous Kanaks had suffered from discrimination for too long, the group added, insisting it sought a peaceful resolution, but criticising the French “colonial state” plan to expand voting rights.
One resident, Laloua Savea, said: “The islands are on fire, for sure, but we have to remember that they tried to be heard for a long time and it led to nothing.
“It had to degenerate for the state to see us, for the politicians to see us.”
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
