U.S. planes to ferry people fleeing Libya out of Tunisia

From Ivan Watson and Jomana Karadsheh, CNN

Djerba, Tunisia (CNN) — U.S. military cargo planes are arriving in Tunisia on Saturday to evacuate Egyptians feeling the Libyan conflict, a deadly war spurring a massive refugee flight.

Two Marine planes, each with a capacity for 60 passengers, landed at the airport in the Tunisian island of Djerba.

U.S. officials told CNN two additional Air Force C-130s seating 80 each are expected to arrive in Djerba to take the Egyptians back home.

Two Italian military cargo planes arrived at the airport delivering humanitarian aid.

There are at least 10 evacuation flights scheduled for Saturday, three sponsored by Britain, three by Spain and one by the Italians, said Firas Kayal, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency.

Nine of the flights are to evacuate Egyptians and the other is for Malians. There are a few thousand Egyptians left in Tunisia awaiting evacuation after more than 40,000 were taken home.

Kayal said there are also three ships preparing to evacuate people.

The violence in Libya has generated an exodus out of the North African nation. Almost 200,000 people, a majority of them foreign workers, have fled Libya — nearly 100,000 to Tunisia and a similar number to Egypt — according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The numbers of people entering Tunisia daily from Libya has dropped to around or below 2,000 in the last three days after they averaged 10,000 to 15,000 people previously.

Hovig Etyemezian, a field officer for the U.N. refugee agency, attributed the drop in part to fear and the manipulation of the flow of refugees by Libyan authorities.

“A lot of them were scared from leaving because of the fighting so they were staying in their houses,” he said Saturday. “We fear the regime might be blocking refugees from the border.”

A Sudanese man who crossed into Tunisia said Libyans had been confiscating phones and SIM cards of people fleeing. He said people are afraid to make the journey because of the fighting and the cost for bus or taxi transport to the border has spiked.

However, he said, Libyans are not stopping traffic toward border.

Raoul Gernali, a Filipino engineer who had been working on a Libyan water project, said Libyan soldiers at the Tunisian border stole his laptop, money and mobile phone.

Because of complications with his group’s flight home, he and his Filipino colleagues have had to spend three days at the airport.

Many countries, such as India and China, put in place well organized evacuation operations for their citizens. But others, including Egyptians and Bangladeshis, have been left to fend for themselves.

Kayal said more than 10,000 Bangladeshis are awaiting transport in Tunisia and hundreds more still arriving there.

Many Bangladeshis have had to walk to the border because their money was stolen by soldiers and they could not pay for transportation costs. One man suffered a heart attack and died, aid officials confirmed.