Countries scramble to evacuate citizens from bloody unrest

GOVERNMENTS scrambled by air and sea to pick up their citizens stranded by Libya’s bloody unrest, with thousands of Turks crowding into a stadium to await evacuation and Egyptians gathering at the border to escape the chaos.

At least two airlines, British Airways and Emirates, the Middle East’s largest, said they were canceling flights to Tripoli.

Britain said it was redeploying a warship, the HMS Cumberland, off the Libyan coast in readiness for a possible sea-borne evacuation of British citizens stuck in the north African country. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said his country was also seeking to send a charter flight to Libya but the plane had yet to receive the necessary permission to land.

Two civilian ferries from Turkey and one military ship were expected to arrive in the hard-hit eastern city of Benghazi to evacuate about 3,000 Turkish citizens after the country was unable to get permission to land at the city’s airport. Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek said the ferries could help evacuate up to 6,000 people per day, if Libyan authorities allow the vessels to dock at Benghazi.

Meanwhile, about 5,000 Egyptians have returned home from Libya by land and about 10,000 more are waiting to cross the Libya-Egypt border, an Egyptian security official said. Egypt says it will also send six commercial and two military planes to repatriate thousands more caught in the revolt against Gaddafi’s regime.

Some people were still getting out on regularly scheduled flights, but many countries were sending planes to fetch their citizens, with Serbia, Russia, the Netherlands and France reporting they had permission to land in Tripoli, a process made more difficult by the uncertainty about who is in charge.

“The situation is very variable and our basic issue is who is in control of what in the country so that our landing and overflight requests are answered,” Greek Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Dollis said.

Greek officials later said the country was ready to evacuate 15,000 Chinese nationals by transferring them by merchant ships to the Greek island of Crete. Libya is one of the world’s biggest oil producers, and many oil companies were also evacuating their expat workers and their families.

Turkey has a huge presence in Libya, with about 25,000 citizens in the country and more than 200 Turkish companies involved in construction projects worth more than $15 billion.

other countries have also asked for help from Turkey to evacuate their citizens, though he did not identify them. Italy was sending an air force transport aircraft to Benghazi to evacuate roughly 100 Italian citizens.

A Dutch air force transport plane picked up about 100 citizens from Tripoli. Two German military planes also landed in Tripoli.