German Minister's plane diverted from Djibouti due to lack of permit

German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock looks on during a Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on January 22, 2024 [JOHN THYS/AFP via Getty Images]

German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, on Wednesday had to interrupt a visit to Djibouti after her government plane was forced to fly to Saudi Arabia instead, as it lacked a permit to fly over Eritrea, a delegation source and local media said, Reuters reports.

Djibouti was the first stop of Baerbock’s three-day trip to East Africa, where she is scheduled to hold talks on the ongoing conflict in Sudan. Kenya and South Sudan are the next destinations on the agenda.

Last August, Baerbock’s planned week-long trip to the Indo-Pacific region had to be cancelled due to repeated mechanical issues with her government plane.

WATCH: David Guiraud pledges unyielding stand against genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.