SAS ‘is on stand-by’ in race to rescue oil workers from Libya
British officials are drawing up plans with Nato allies to rescue hundreds of international oil workers stranded in camps in the Libyan desert.
With an SAS contingent reportedly on stand-by to assist, Defence Secretary Liam Fox said there would be an “international co-ordinated effort” to extract the workers left at the mercy of armed gangs roaming the area.
As the first British nationals to be evacuated from the strife-torn North African state began arriving home yesterday, Prime Minister David Cameron said he was “extremely sorry” for the delays to the rescue operation and promised lessons would be learned.
Mr Cameron is returning from his trip to the Gulf and will today chair back-to-back meetings of the National Security Council and the Cobra emergencies committee in an attempt to reassert control after days of apparent drift in Whitehall.
A total of 132 UK nationals finally arrived in Malta from Tripoli on the much-delayed Foreign Office chartered flight, while a further 51 followed on an RAF Hercules. Seventy-nine more landed at Gatwick on an plane chartered by BP.
More than 100 UK citizens left Libya’s second city, Benghazi, on the Royal Navy frigate HMS Cumberland, which will take them to Valetta in Malta, where they will board flights back to the UK.
However, the main focus of concern was increasingly the oil workers - including an estimated 170 Britons - stranded in camps in the desert.
Dr Fox, who has discussed the situation with Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said they were looking at a “range of options” with international allies to get the workers out of Libya.
He said: “What we will decide as an international co-ordinated effort is that we will all want to get our citizens out of harm’s way. We may be taking out citizens of other countries, other countries may be taking out UK citizens. The better we have it co-ordinated and de-conflicted, the better the chances of success.
“That is what we will be doing, I imagine, through the night tonight and over the weekend.”
The Defence Secretary did not go into details, although he confirmed that one possibility being considered was to get some of the workers out by road, either to Egypt or Tunisia.
• No reports of Scots harmed, Hague says
• Hit or miss in the race to evacuate foreign nationals
Earlier, Mr Cameron, in Oman on the final leg of his tour of the Middle East and the Gulf, acknowledged there had been criticism that the government had been too slow to start evacuating its citizens compared with other countries.
“What I want to say to those people is I am extremely sorry,” the Prime Minister said.
“This is not an easy situation. We have achieved a lot this morning, but we need to do more, and we need to do it quickly.
“There is nothing more important than getting British nationals, our own citizens, out of Libya and safely back home.
“There are going to be lessons to be learned from this and we will do everything to deal with the situation on the ground and to learn the lessons for the future.”
Those in the first wave of Britons to arrive home yesterday described scenes of chaos at Tripoli airport as thousands of foreign nationals struggled to flee the embattled country.
Ewan Black, from Fife, was among 79 passengers to arrive at Gatwick Airport at 7:15am on a flight chartered by oil companies. Mr Black, an IT support worker for an oil company, said the scenes in Tripoli airport had been terrifying.
“The airport is just a zoo,” he said. “There’s about 10,000 people there, all trying to get out - Turkish, Tunisian, Egyptian, Indian. It’s just absolutely manic.Basically it’s uncontrolled outside.”