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Countries rush to evacuate citizens from Libya
AFP - Thursday, February 24
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Countries rush to evacuate citizens from Libya
ISTANBUL (AFP) - – Governments and private companies around the world scrambled Thursday to evacuate citizens and workers from violence-hit Libya, as Italy braced for a "biblical" exodus of up to 300,000 migrants.
Fears of a full-scale civil war in the North African country prompted countries from Canada to China to scramble to charter ferries and planes to secure their citizens' safety despite poor communication links and growing violence.
Thousands of foreigners packed Tripoli's airport hoping to leave the widening chaos behind.
As the increasingly isolated Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi clung to power, Turkey evacuated upwards of 6,000 of its nationals in three days by air, sea and land in what amounted to its biggest evacuation effort ever by some accounts.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Wednesday that 21 unspecified countries had asked Turkey to allow the repatriation of their nationals through Turkey.
Around 25,000 Turks are based in Libya, which was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912, when Italy conquered the North African country. Related article: Foreigners fleeing Libya tell of fear and chaos
The logistical challenges were especially acute for Asian countries with over 150,000 low-paid workers trapped in Libya.
Some 60,000 Bangladeshis, 30,000 Filipinos, 23,000 Thais and 18,000 Indians are among those living under Kadhafi's tottering regime.
China arranged to evacuate half of its 30,000 citizens on four ferries chartered from Greece, while the first of several 250-seat chartered planes sent by the Chinese government landed in Tripoli.
China's State Council also decided to deploy nearby cargo ships and even Chinese fishing vessels "carrying needed living and medical supplies."
In Seoul, a foreign ministry spokesman said Seoul has chartered an Egyptian Air Airbus A330 to fly some of the estimated 1,400 South Koreans still in Libya to Cairo.
Hanoi said it was monitoring conditions for 10,000 Vietnamese, while Nepalese officials were looking at overland routes to Egypt for about 3,000 citizens.
Migrante International, a support group for overseas Filipino workers, said Filipinos had been abandoned in workers' camps in Libya to fend for themselves, as Philippine Vice President Jejomar Binay planned to fly to the Middle East Friday to review emergency plans for Filipinos in the region.
Hundreds of American nationals and other foreigners have boarded a US-chartered ferry in Tripoli but high seas delayed their departure for Malta.
Some 200 US nationals contacted the embassy seeking evacuation, the State Department spokesman said, adding that Libyan authorities had been "cooperative" during embarkation at As-Shahab port in central Tripoli.
Britain, meanwhile, defended its mission to rescue nationals stranded in Libya after the first of two planes chartered to pick up passengers from Tripoli eventually left London over nine hours late, while other nations successfully sent military planes to bring back their nationals. Related article: Govt defends ill-fated Libyan rescue mission
London vowed to send as many evacuation flights as necessary, possibly including military planes, to get its citizens out.
Oil worker James Coyle told BBC radio he was one of 90 Britons trapped in a desert camp among 300 people, including Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Germans, Austrians and Romanians.
"We are living a nightmare and we have asked the British government and they have just totally ignored us," he said, noting the group only had enough food and water for a day.
Latin American giant Brazil, which counts some 500 to 600 citizens in Libya, has sent a large ship and obtained permission for five planes to evacuate its citizens after initially struggling to obtaining overflight and landing permissions.
A number of Brazilian firms also employ thousands of workers in the restive country, though only a fraction of them are Brazilians.
Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon planned to travel to Rome on Thursday to meet with some 200 Canadian evacuees due to fly in via charter plane.
The EU's executive arm said it would provide "extra evacuation capacity," including by sea to help bring out an estimated 10,000 stranded Europeans.
Two planes carrying around 500 French nationals arrived in Paris early Wednesday.
Some 339 Russian railroad and oil workers and their families returned to Moscow aboard three planes.
"They burned down a police station next to our house. There is a lot of gunfire at night -- rounds of machine gun fire. We spent sleepless nights," one woman told Russian state television on arrival.
Russia's emergency ministry said it planned to evacuate a total of 1,263 people from Libya -- 563 Russians and 700 Turkish and Serbian citizens working under contract with the Russian Railways company -- via a total of four planes and a rescue raft.
Already grappling with a mass influx of immigrants from Tunisia since the fall of its veteran ruler, Italy warned that would be nothing compared to the number of immigrants that could flee neighbouring Libya.
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini predicted a wave of refugees 10 times greater than the number of Albanians who fled to Italy during the Kosovo War in the 1990s.
Several thousand foreign migrants have crossed the Tunisian border from Libya in the first such major exodus since the Libyan turmoil began on February 15, the International Organisation for Migration said. Most were Tunisians, but there were also Turks, Lebanese, west Africans, Syrians and Germans.
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