Friday, February 25, 2011

European countries considered Thursday sending special military forces to Libya to evacuate stranded nationals as tens of thousands of foreigners sought to flee fierce fighting.
Those who made it out described a frightening scene: corpses hanging from electric poles in Libya’s eastern port of Benghazi and militia trucks driving around full of dead bodies. One video showed a tank apparently crushing a car with people inside.

In Brussels, senior officials said the EU was weighing a range of options to evacuate 5,000-6,000 citizens and said one possibility was a military humanitarian intervention force.
“We are in contact with EU member states to see whether their facilities, civilian and military, can be deployed for this [evacuation of EU citizens],” a senior EU official said.

Germany has sent three warships to Libya to evacuate its stranded citizens, a Defense Ministry spokesman told AFP. “In total, there are around 600 troops on these three ships,” he said, adding the vessels were heading for the Gulf of Sirte to Tripoli.

The U.K. government discussed whether its military special forces will need to rescue about 170 British oil workers and colleagues from other nations stranded in desert camps.

Sky quoted sources as saying the Special Boat Service, a special forces unit, was on standby for a possible rescue mission to Libya, but the government declined comment.
According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 30,000 people, mainly Tunisian and Egyptian migrant workers, have fled violence in Libya.

Roughly 15,000 of them have crossed into Tunisia, the vast majority of them Tunisian nationals, she said. Some 1,000 Egyptians, 830 Chinese and 300 Libyans are also among them.
The U.N. refugee agency is scheduled to start an airlift over the weekend to bring tents and other emergency shelter supplies into Djerba, Tunisia, spokesman Andrej Mahecic said.
Tunisia’s state news agency TAP announced that a ship would leave the port of La Goulette in Tunis Thursday for Benghazi to repatriate Tunisians. The national carrier Tunisair said it intended to repatriate 800 more Tunisians from Tripoli.

Some 3,000 people arrived at the Mediterranean port of Marmaris in Turkey early aboard two ferries that Ankara sent to Libya to collect Turks, the Foreign Ministry said.
Among them were several dozen foreigners, including nationals of Britain, Canada, Germany, Syria and Russia. Seven planes were to bring more people, Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said.

Another Turkish ferry, with a capacity to carry up to 800 people, was expected to reach the flashpoint city of Benghazi Thursday afternoon, with two others on their way, Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said.
Jordan’s information minister said that nearly 1,100 out of 9,000 nationals have been evacuated from Libya, as military planes have been sent to bring home more citizens.
Thousands of Chinese began landing Thursday at the port of Heraklion on the Greek island of Crete after their evacuation from Libya aboard chartered ferries.

The ferries brought over nearly 4,400 Chinese nationals and scores of evacuees from European countries, Thailand and Sri Lanka, local police said. Some 15,000 Chinese overall are to be evacuated from Libya through Greece.
Witnesses said Benghazi, now controlled by anti-government protesters, has seen fierce looting and killings.
Ali Tumkaya, the human resources manager for Turkey’s Sembol company, which was building a university in Benghazi, said militias raided the airport there. He saw vans with more than 20 dead bodies, who Tumkaya said appeared to be mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa.

Another Turkish evacuee saw dead men hanging in the street. “There were a few men hanging from poles, electric poles,” Serdar Taskin, who worked for the Mammar Arabia company in Benghazi, told the Associated Press in Marmaris. He did not know if the dead were protesters or Gadhafi supporters.
Americans who eagerly climbed aboard the Maria Dolores ferry at Tripoli’s As-Shahaab port Wednesday faced a long delay in their travel plans. Strong winds have been whipping up high waves in the Mediterranean, and the 600-passenger catamaran ferry was not likely to leave for Malta until Friday.

A South Korean warship is sailing toward Libya from Somalia to help evacuate citizens stranded amid growing unrest there, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday.
Several airlines suspended flights to Libya Thursday – Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines and Alitalia – amid scenes of chaos and deteriorating security and safety at Tripoli airport.
Thousands of Filipino workers are desperate to be rescued, an industry support group said as it blasted the Philippine government’s efforts. – Agencies