Caos en Trípoli...al menos.

Foreigners Flee Libya Amid Chaos

WSJ

By STEVE MCGRATH

LONDON—In one of the biggest cross-border evacuations seen in the past decade, countries across the world were Wednesday trying to repatriate tens of thousands of foreigners from Libya as the death toll in an uprising against the rule of Col Moammar Gadhafi continued to grow, although rescue missions were being hampered by the growing chaos in the country.

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Yannis Behrakis /Reuters
A Tunisian woman carried her belongings as she crossed from Libya into Tunisia at the Ras Jdir border crossing Wednesday.

With most commercial flights cancelled, countries were organizing planes, ships and even buses and fishing boats to get their citizens out of the country by any means possible. However, as Col. Gadhafi continued to lose control of vast swathes of the country to the opposition movement, some flights were unable to land at Tripoli airport and were instead queuing in southern Europe awaiting clearance. Libya's ports were also closed, although some evacuation ships were getting through.

Well over 100,000 foreign nationals live and work in Libya, mainly in the country's oil industry but also in industries such as transport and telecommunications. The need to evacuate foreign nationals increased amid signs that central control over the nation was weakening and as reports emerged of soldiers looting and plundering.

The European Commission said it was ready to help coordinate the evacuation of up to 10,000 European Union nationals as member states continued to send planes. Many countries had sent teams of officials to the airport at Tripoli, the country's capital, to assist with the evacuation as thousands gathered awaiting repatriation. Most diplomats remained, at least for the time being.

Libya Protests Intensify

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Hussein Malla/Associated Press
Protetsers demonstrated against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in Tobruq Wednesday.

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France and the Netherlands were among countries forced to divert flights to Malta and Sicily because they couldn't get clearance to land, while Russian news agencies said a plane sent by energy giant OAO Gazprom was also forced to land in Malta. A plane sent by China was awaiting clearance to proceed from Athens.

The U.S., meanwhile, chartered a ferry to pick up travellers from the country after Libyan authorities refused permission for its planes to land, according to the U.S. State Department, which estimated it had several thousand nationals in Libya, many of them with dual citizenship.

The U.S. State Department said its citizens should head to the As-Shahab port in central Tripoli as soon as possible to be processed for boarding on a ferry set to depart at 1300 GMT Wednesday.


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Countries also helped each other with the evacuation. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs said one flight that had already landed back in the Netherlands carried 82 people, but only 32 were Dutch. The remainder were Belgian, British and Americans. Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said it was seeking to evacuate 1,263 people, including Turkish, Serbian and Montenegran citizens working in Libya with Russian companies. Two Turkish ships evacuated 3,000 Turks from Libya, escorted by a Turkish navy frigate, the foreign ministry said.

Meanwhile, China was trying to organize an evacuation of its 30,000 citizens in the country by plane, boat and bus, Xinhua reported, quoting the country's Foreign Ministry and state media. Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang was coordinating an emergency response that included chartered civil aircraft, Chinese fishing vessels and cargo ships owned by China Ocean Shipping Company.

The China Daily quoted a spokesman for China's embassy in Libya saying dozens of Chinese citizens had been injured since unrest broke out a week ago and fifteen had been hospitalized.

Other Asian nations were seeking help to repatriate nationals. Bangladesh, which has up to 60,000 workers in Libya, and Sri Lanka both contacted the International Organization for Migration to assist with repatriation.

The IOM appealed for international donors to help fund humanitarian assistance. The last time it launched such an appeal was in 2006, when it helped evacuate more than 13,000 people from Lebanon.

The IOM also said its staff at Libya's border with Tunisia reported that migrants, including nationals of Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Germany, had started to cross the border to escape the violence and get back to their home countries.

Only in January, foreigners fled Tunisia as violent protests brought regime change in the country, a pattern repeated in Egypt in February as the political crisis there spread. However, neither were on the scale of the evacuation now under way in Libya.

—Robin van Daalen, William Mauldin, David Roman, and Riva Froymovich contributed to this