Several Countries Order Diplomatic Staff, Citizen Evacuation amid Renewed Libya Clashes
Spain will temporarily evacuate its ambassador and most of its embassy staff from Libya because of the "worsening security situation" in the capital Tripoli, the foreign ministry said Thursday.
"The government of Spain trusts that the situation of instability in Libya can be overcome soon and reiterates its call for a ceasefire as soon as possible," the statement added.
One staff member will remain in charge of the embassy.
Greece, meanwhile, has sent a navy frigate to Libya to evacuate embassy staff and dozens of its nationals amid deadly clashes between rival militias, a Greek official said on Thursday.
"Some 200 people will be evacuated, including seven diplomatic staff," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
These include around 70 Greeks, some 15 Cypriots and 80 Chinese, in addition to other nationalities.
"There are a lot of requests but capacity on the frigate is limited," the official said.
According to reports, a Greek special forces unit is also on board the frigate Salamis.
The Philippines was also preparing Thursday to evacuate 13,000 citizens from Libya as violence raged and after a Filipino worker was beheaded and a nurse was gang-raped there.
Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario was heading to neighboring Tunisia to organize an evacuation.
Del Rosario said he was repeating a 2011 mission that evacuated thousands of Filipino workers during the uprising that toppled Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
"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.
It also imposed a travel ban to the North African country, which has been plagued by violence since Gadhafi's overthrow.
On Wednesday, a Filipina nurse was abducted by a gang of youths outside her residence in Tripoli and gang-raped, the foreign department said.
She was released about two hours later and a Filipino consular team took her to hospital for treatment.
"We condemn these crimes that have been committed against our people," President Benigno Aquino's spokesman Herminio Coloma told reporters in Manila.
Despite the dangers, del Rosario said many of the Filipinos, mostly employed in construction and hospitals, are refusing to leave because they would be unemployed back home.
Only a few more than 700 had left Libya by Wednesday, according to the foreign ministry, despite the rapidly deteriorating situation as warring militias battle for control of key population centers.
Del Rosario said he is 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 bused to Tunisia, where flight arrangements would be made, he added.
And on Wednesday, Brazil evacuated its diplomatic staff from Libya amid growing lawlessness and unrest and after similar moves by other Western nations.
Citing "deteriorating safety conditions," the foreign ministry said "the government has decided to transfer temporarily its Brazilian staff at its Tripoli embassy to Tunis," an official statement said
It does not mean the embassy will be closed, the statement stressed.
The United States and Canada also have shuttered their embassies in Tripoli, while several countries including Britain, France, Germany and Egypt advised their nationals over the weekend to leave immediately.
Another round of clashes erupted on Thursday, airport security chief Al-Jilani al-Dahech told Agence France Presse, with attackers assaulting the facility using both small arms and heavy weapons.
Dahech said some of his men had been wounded, but gave no details.
At least 100 people have reportedly been killed and 400 wounded since July 13 when the airport battle erupted.
Witnesses said there was also fighting on the road to the airport and in a western suburb of the capital on Thursday, while numerous explosions were heard in the city center.
The Tripoli clashes, the most violent since Gadhafi's ouster, started with an assault on the airport by a coalition of groups, mainly Islamists, which has since been backed by fighters from third city Misrata.
The attackers are battling to flush out fellow former rebels from the hill town of Zintan, southwest of Tripoli, who have controlled the airport for the past three years.
The violence, also raging in Benghazi, prompted Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands to join Washington in urging their citizens to leave as soon as possible.
The United States pulled its diplomatic staff out under air cover on Saturday.
Belgium, Malta, Spain and Turkey previously urged their nationals to leave.
Meanwhile, firefighters were still battling a blaze at a fuel depot near the airport that broke out Sunday after a rocket hit a storage tank.
More than 90 million liters of fuel are stored in the facility, which also houses a natural gas reservoir.
Source: Agence France Presse
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