\n 1 March 2011<\/span>
\nLast updated at <\/span>17:48 ET<\/span>
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![\"Crowds](\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/bc9acc382554_de27-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPlease turn on JavaScript.<\/strong> Media requires JavaScript to play.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n \t\t\t<\/p>\n The BBC’s Jim Muir: “There are thousands upon thousands of people waiting desperately to cross that border”<\/p>\n \t\t\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The UN has called for a mass humanitarian evacuation of people fleeing Libya for Tunisia, saying the border situation is at “crisis point”.<\/p>\n General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said thousands of lives were at stake. Some 75,000 people have fled to Tunisia since the unrest began and 40,000 more are waiting to cross, the UN says.<\/p>\n The organisation has voted to suspend Libya from its Human Rights Council.<\/p>\n Beleaguered Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi has rejected calls to leave.<\/p>\n He has played down the unrest in the country and is trying to regain areas held by protesters in the west. The protesters have control of major towns in the east.<\/p>\n ‘Strong message’<\/span><\/p>\n The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said it was urgently appealing, along with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), for governments to engage in “a massive humanitarian evacuation of tens of thousands of Egyptians and other third country nationals”.<\/p>\n Vietnamese, Indians, Turks, Tunisians, Chinese and Thai workers are among those stranded.<\/p>\n \t\t<\/p>\n \t<\/p>\n The massive influx has caused strains for Tunisia, a country which has been going through its own convulsions and where thousands of jobless young men have been trying to flee to Europe.<\/p>\n There have been angry demonstrations at the border by local Tunisian youths denouncing the flood of Egyptian migrants in particular.<\/p>\n Tunisian army forces have intervened to impose control and allow the flow to continue. <\/p>\n They also fired in the air to disperse local Tunisian smugglers who wanted to take money from the Egyptians on promises of smuggling them home on boats.<\/p>\n \t\n\t<\/div>\n The groups called for governments to supply “massive financial and logistical assets… including planes, boats and expert personnel”.<\/p>\n “The two organisations deem this operation essential as the overcrowding at the border worsens by the hour,” they said.<\/p>\n IOM’s Tunisia mission chief Marc Petzold said: “There is an urgent need to decongest the border area which lacks adequate facilities to host large numbers of people.”<\/p>\n More than 75,000 people have crossed the Tunisian border since 19 February, most of them Egyptians, with 70,000 more leaving Libya via the Egyptian border.<\/p>\n On Tuesday Tunisian guards fired into the air to try to control the crowds.<\/p>\n Mr Ban said: “We need concrete action on the ground to provide humanitarian and medical assistance. Time is the essence. Thousands of lives are at stake.”<\/p>\n He said the initial priority was food, water, sanitation and shelter followed by renewed efforts to return the evacuees home.<\/p>\n Mr Ban said reports had suggested 1,000 people had so far died in the Libyan unrest.<\/p>\n World Food Programme executive director Josette Sheeran told the BBC food was being brought in by road and air, and bought locally, but supplies were under “deep stress”.<\/p>\n Please turn on JavaScript.<\/strong> Media requires JavaScript to play.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n \t\t\t<\/p>\n Col Gaddafi told the BBC that the protesters were members of al-Qaeda<\/p>\n \t\t\n <\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The BBC’s Jim Muir, at the border, says thousands upon thousands of people are waiting desperately to cross. Some are being crushed in the crowds; many in a state of complete exhaustion.<\/p>\n In voting to suspend Libya from the UN Human Rights Council, the resolution – passed by consensus by the UN membership – accused Libya of committing gross and systematic violations of human rights.<\/p>\n Mr Ban said: “These UN actions send a strong and important message – a message of great consequence within the region and beyond – that there is no impunity, that those who commit crimes against humanity will be punished, that fundamental principles of justice and accountability shall prevail.”<\/p>\n US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said: “People who turn their guns on their own people have no place on the Human Rights Council.”<\/p>\n The BBC’s Barbara Plett at the UN says this resolution seals Col Gaddafi’s isolation as it is the body that represents all member states – the one where Libya might have expected to have some support and it has none.<\/p>\n However, she says there appears little appetite at the UN for a resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, a move the UK in particular has been investigating.<\/p>\n UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said the action could still be taken as “there have been occasions in the past when such a no-fly zone has had clear, legal, international justification even without a Security Council resolution”.<\/p>\n However, there are few signs of consensus – French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said there would be no no-fly zone without a UN resolution.<\/p>\n Russia has called a no-fly zone “superfluous”.<\/p>\n Protesters fear the Libyan air force could launch attacks to try to oust them from the towns they have won.<\/p>\n Although the opposition is fairly secure in the east, Gaddafi forces are said to be circling a number of towns held by protesters in the west, including Zawiya, Nalut and Zintan.<\/p>\n Attacks on protesters in Zawiya, Zintan and Misrata, east of Tripoli, were repelled overnight on Monday.<\/p>\n In other developments:<\/p>\n In an interview with BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, US TV network ABC and the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper on Monday, Col Gaddafi laughed at suggestions he would leave Libya.<\/p>\n He said true Libyans had not demonstrated against him and that his forces had not fired on protesters.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p>\nAt the scene<\/h2>\n
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