Nouméa international airport will remain closed to commercial flights until Thursday, despite calls from Australia and New Zealand to evacuate their citizens

Charles Roger, director of the New Caledonia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI), confirmed this information to AFP, adding that the closure would last until 9am local time on Thursday (midnight in mainland France).

This decision comes after a week of violence unprecedented in 40 years in the French territory in the South Pacific, triggered by unrest linked to a reform of the electoral body contested by the independentists.

Obstacles persist, with roads still blocked where rioters have erected their barricades, mainly in the Noumea conurbation and along the fifty-kilometre road leading to Tontouta international airport.

Despite this, the representative of the central government in New Caledonia expressed his satisfaction at the initial ‘success’ of a vast gendarmerie operation against these blockades, launched at dawn on Sunday.