2 ships carry 3,000 Turks back home from Libya

[February 23, 2011]  ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey evacuated 3,000 citizens on two ships Wednesday from the chaos of Libya's uprising but thousands of other foreigners were still stranded at Tripoli airport, struggling to get a flight home.

Several countries -- Russia, Germany and Ukraine among them -- sent more planes to help their citizens escape the turmoil engulfing the North African nation and the United States said Americans would be evacuated by ferry later Wednesday to the Mediterranean island of Malta.

"The airport was mobbed, you wouldn't believe the number of people," said Kathleen Burnett, of Baltimore, Ohio, as she stepped off an Austrian Airlines flight from Tripoli to Vienna on Tuesday. "It was total chaos."

The Turkish commercial ships, which left from the eastern Libyan port of Benghazi, are being escorted by a navy frigate, the first of which is expected to reach Turkey's Mediterranean port of Marmaris around midnight. Turkey has also sent two more commercial ships to Libya.

Turkey has about 25,000 citizens and more than 200 companies involved in construction projects in Libya worth more than $15 billion. Some of the construction sites have come under attack by protesters. Turkey has now evacuated more than 5,000 citizens from Libya over three days, about 2,000 of them by plane, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

"We are carrying out the largest evacuation operation in our history," he said.

Turkey was still trying to reach all of its citizens in Libya and also received calls for help from many other countries.

"So far, a total of 21 countries have asked Turkey to evacuate their citizens as well," Davutoglu said.

One Turkish citizen has been killed in Tripoli, he said. Davutoglu said Turkey was considering diverting its ships from Libya to Tunisia for quicker evacuation.

"We will then bring them from Tunisia by planes," he said.

Davutoglu stressed that Turkey was not leaving Libya and would send "food and medicine to Libyan brothers by ships."

Libya is one of the world's biggest oil producers -- producing nearly 2 percent of the world's oil -- and many oil companies were evacuating their expatriate workers and families.

The International Organization for Migration said several Asian, African and one European government have requested its help to evacuate their citizens. Migrants were pouring into Libya's land borders with Egypt and Tunisia and the group was trying to help find accommodation for those already at the border, said Jemini Pandya, a spokeswoman for the Geneva-based organization.

Pandya said it was difficult to estimate how many migrants, many of them undocumented, would flee Libya, but "it will be thousands."

The first planeload of Russians to be evacuated from Libya landed in Moscow, bringing 118 Russians. Three more planes are expected to arrive later in the day. A ship was also setting sail for Ras Lanuf, the site of Libya's largest refinery and port, to evacuate up to 1,000 Russians, Turks, Serbs and Montenegrins.

A Bulgaria Air plane, carrying 110 Bulgarians and six Romanians from Tripoli -- mostly medical and construction workers -- arrived in Sofia.

"I saw horror," a nurse who gave only her first name, Polly, told reporters upon her arrival in Sofia.

Some passengers said they heard gunfights.

"We decided to return because the situation is unstable. When we left Tripoli there was some kind of euphoria, everybody was celebrating some kind of victory," engineer Natalia Vakova said. "But that's Libya -- absolutely unpredictable."

British Airways and Emirates, the Middle East's largest airline, canceled flights to Tripoli on Tuesday because of the violence there.

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has urged his supporters to strike back against the Libyan protesters, escalating a crackdown that has led to widespread shooting in the streets. Nearly 300 people have been killed in the nationwide wave of anti-government protests.

Unease over the safety of U.S. citizens intensified after failed attempts to get some out on Monday and Tuesday.

Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Christoph Prommersberger said a Dutch KDC-10 air force transport plane left Tripoli late Tuesday with 32 Dutch evacuees and 50 other nationalities.

"What we hear from our people is it is chaotic but functioning," he said of the Tripoli airport.

Britain is redeploying a warship, the HMS Cumberland, off the Libyan coast for a possible sea-borne evacuation of British citizens.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, meanwhile, said Italy will let British and Serbian evacuation flights land on Italian soil.

Italians continued to take Alitalia flights from Tripoli home, and a few hundred have already returned to Italy. An Italian air force plane landed in Libya on Wednesday to evacuate more people.

Separately, two Italian naval vessels are headed to eastern Libyan ports to get out citizens from Benghazi and other cities where airports are damaged. Italian citizens based in Misurata, Libya, said their private company was arranging evacuation by sea because the airfield at that coastal city has also been damaged.

[Associated Press; By SELCAN HACAOGLU]

Associated Press writers across Europe contributed to this report.

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