MANILA: The Philippines was preparing yesterday to evacuate 13,000 citizens from Libya as violence continued to rage and a Filipino worker was beheaded and a nurse gang-raped there.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario was heading to neighbouring Tunisia to organise an evacuation as fighting resumed between militias seeking to control the Libyan capital’s crippled international airport.
Del Rosario said he was repeating a 2011 mission that evacuated thousands of Filipino workers during the uprising that toppled Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. “Our major challenge, as in 2011, is to convince our folks that they must leave Libya at the soonest time to avoid the perils of a highly exacerbating situation there,” he told reporters in Manila.
The Philippines ordered an evacuation on July 20, hours after the discovery in the eastern city of Benghazi of the beheaded remains of a Filipino construction worker who had been abducted.
Manila also imposed a travel ban to the North African country, which is plagued by violence.
On Wednesday, a Filipina nurse was abducted by a gang of youths outside her residence in Tripoli and gang-raped before being released two hours later, the foreign department said.
Despite the dangers, del Rosario said many of the Filipinos, mostly construction and health workers, are refusing to leave because they would be unemployed back home.
Only a few more than 700 had left Libya by Wednesday, despite the rapidly deteriorating situation, as warring factions battle for control of key population centres.
Del Rosario said he was flying to Tunisia’s Djerba island to “try to convince our people to leave (Libya) because the situation there is very dangerous.
“We are in the process of engaging ships from Malta that would pick up our people from Benghazi, Misrata and hopefully Tripoli then return to Malta for air transport to Manila,” he said.
While each vessel could carry up to 1,500 people, he said the government was still negotiating safe passage through these ports.
Failing that, the Filipinos would be bussed to Tunisia, where flight arrangements would be made, he added.
Del Rosario could not have flown in to Tripoli if he had wanted to, because the airport was knocked out of commission by fighting earlier this month.
AFP
