Algeria sent fighter jets to Niger to thwart ‘coup attempt’, president says 

Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has said that his country sent fighter jets to Niger in late August to help thwart a “coup attempt” that shook the capital, Niamey.

The confirmation came in excerpts from Tebboune’s interview with local media outlets that was broadcast on Saturday ahead of its full release.

Tebboune said that the warplanes were sent because some parties had “gone too far”.

He added that Niger’s Prime Minister, Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine, had been visiting Algeria and returned home at night just before the mutiny.

“For obvious reasons, this is a provocation against us … and I too will send planes and we’ll meet head-on,” Tebboune said.

He did not specify who he meant when he said some had gone too far, or whether he was referring to internal or external actors.

Sustained gunfire and explosions were heard in Niamey overnight on August 28 into August 29.

A military base at Diori Hamani International Airport was first targeted by renegade soldiers, followed by attacks on the state broadcaster and presidential palace.

Niger’s Minister of Defence, General Salifou Modi, announced at the time that a group of military personnel attempted to detain a number of their colleagues at Air Base 101, and opened fire on strategic locations in the capital.

Security forces had intervened and managed to contain the situation, gradually regaining control over the targeted locations, he added.

On August 30 , the Algerian Ministry of Defence said it had sent four fighter jets to Niger following unrest. It said two patrols of four Sukhoi Su-30 aircraft had landed at Niamey airport, accompanied by an air-to-air refuelling plane.

The warplanes were deployed at the request of Nigerien authorities on “a mission to support the Nigerien army in confronting an attempt to destabilise the brotherly state of Niger,”  the ministry added then.

Niger’s military government last month accused France of orchestrating the failed mutiny, but France denied any involvement in the events in its former colony.

Algeria and Niger share close security and military ties, as well as a long land border, with Algeria viewing the stability of the Sahel region as an essential component of its national security.

Niger’s Prime Minister Zeine met President Tebboune when he visited Algeria on August 26–27 as the head of a high-level ministerial delegation aimed at enhancing cooperation between the two countries.