Algeria confirms it flew fighter jets into Niger to stop a 'coup attempt', president says

Algiers: Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has confirmed that his country sent fighter jets into Niger in late August to stop what he called a coup attempt, revealing in a televised press briefing on Saturday that Algiers deployed warplanes to Niamey after mutineers attacked strategic targets in the capital. According to Tebboune, the deployment followed attacks on the night of August 28–29, when renegade soldiers — identifying themselves as the "Armed Forces for the Restoration of the Fatherland" (FARP) — stormed a military base adjacent to Niamey's Diori Hamani International Airport and pushed toward the state broadcaster and the presidential palace. Niger's defence minister, General Salifou Modi, said military personnel had first tried to detain colleagues at Air Base 101 before opening fire on strategic locations in the capital. Loyalist forces contained the mutiny and gradually regained control; regional reporting says at least three members of the Presidential Guard were killed in the fighting. Algeria's defence ministry had announced the deployment on August 30, saying two patrols of Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets — four aircraft in total — flew the roughly 2,600-kilometre route from Algiers to Niamey, escorted by an Il-78 aerial tanker and trailed by an Il-76 transport aircraft, at the request of the Nigerien authorities. Niger's Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine personally welcomed the aircraft on arrival at Air Base 101, which sits inside the airport perimeter where the mutiny had erupted days earlier. Tebboune did not name the parties behind the attempt, but called it a provocation against Algeria — pointedly noting that Niger's prime minister had been visiting Algeria just before the mutiny. Niger's military government had previously accused France of orchestrating the failed coup; Paris denied any involvement. The admission is significant far beyond Niamey. Algiers has never contributed troops to UN peacekeeping missions and has repeatedly condemned foreign military involvement in the Sahel — yet here it is, projecting air power into a neighbouring capital. Analysts have noted that the deployment came without the prior parliamentary approval that Algeria's own 2020 constitution requires for foreign deployments. And the irony cuts deeper: only three years ago, Algiers denounced General Abdourahamane Tiani's July 2023 coup against elected president Mohamed Bazoum as illegitimate. Now Algerian jets sit on the tarmac of the junta's airbase. Niger's military rulers have turned to Moscow since taking power, with Russia's Africa Corps reportedly assisting loyalist forces during the August mutiny — though neither Moscow nor Niamey has officially confirmed that involvement. Algeria's intervention thus slots into a wider contest for influence in the Sahel, where France's expulsion has left a vacuum that Russia is filling and regional powers are scrambling to exploit. Tebboune framed the mission as support for a "brotherly nation" against destabilisation. But when a government that denounced a coup in 2023 now lands fighter jets on behalf of the coup-makers, the principle on display is not stability — it is power.