Countries Evacuate Citizens From Libya At Least 2 Airlines Canceling Flights To Tripoli
ANKARA, Turkey — Governments scrambled by air and sea to pick up their citizens stranded by Libya’s bloody unrest on Tuesday, with thousands of people crowding the airport to await evacuation and Egyptians gathering at the border to escape the chaos.
“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. Everybody was being checked out by the police but everyone was very obedient.”
At least two airlines, British Airways and Emirates, the Middle East’s largest, said they were canceling flights to Tripoli, as reports spread that bodies of protesters littered the streets of neighborhoods in the capital.
Britain said it was redeploying a warship, the HMS Cumberland, off the Libyan coast in readiness for a possible sea-borne evacuation of British citizens stuck in the north African country.