Tunisia's military has set up a tent camp on its border with Libya to accommodate thousands of migrant workers who have been stranded after fleeing a deadly Libyan uprising.
Some of the mostly Egyptian migrants have been stuck for days in the Tunisian tent camp opposite the Libyan border town of Ras Ajdir, waiting for their governments to transport them home. A group of Chinese railway workers who crossed the border avoided that fate Sunday, lining up for buses to take them farther inland for flights home.
Many of the Egyptian migrants complained of being ignored by their government as they waited for instructions from Tunisian authorities. Hundreds of other Egyptians were granted temporary shelter in classrooms and a gymnasium in the Tunisian towns of Zarzis and Jerba.
The U.N. refugee agency said Sunday almost 100,000 people have fled Libya into neighboring Tunisia and Egypt in the past week. U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres appealed for quick and generous international assistance for Tunisian and Egyptian authorities, whom he said face a “humanitarian emergency.”
The Mediterranean island of Malta also has become a hub for the massive international effort to evacuate foreigners from Libya. Malta's Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi says 8,000 people have arrived in his nation from Libya by sea and air since the uprising began earlier this month, and he expects that number to rise.
A ferry docked in Malta Sunday with about 1,800 Libya-based Asian workers, including citizens of China, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
British warship HMS Cumberland also continued ferrying evacuees to Malta Sunday, after picking them up from the eastern Libyan port of Banghazi. Britain also used three military transport planes to fly 150 foreigners to Malta from the Libyan desert Sunday, repeating a covert operation that had rescued a similar number of people in Libya the previous day.
Separately, Germany said its air force evacuated 132 Germans and other EU citizens from the Libyan desert in a secret military mission on Saturday. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Sunday two German military planes flew them to the Greek island of Crete. He said Berlin is trying to evacuate the remaining 100 Germans in Libya as quickly as possible.
Also Sunday, ferries carrying 4,600 evacuees – mostly Chinese nationals – arrived in Crete and the Greek port of Piraeus, near Athens. Another ferry with 2,000 Chinese evacuees is expected to reach Crete late Monday.
China said Monday almost all of the 30,000 Chinese citizens who had been working in Libya have left that nation. The Chinese government has been chartering planes to bring them home from neighboring states in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
Thousands of migrants from South Asia and West Africa were less fortunate, remaining stranded inside Libya, some with no passports or cash and little prospect of receiving help from their impoverished governments.