Over half of Indians in Libya evacuated: govt

New Delhi, Mar 5 (PTI) In stepped-up operations, more
than 50 per cent out of 18,000 Indians would have been pulled
out of strife-torn Libya since the evacuation process started
10 days ago, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs said on
Saturday.
"The pace of evacuation from Libya has been stepped up
even further. Already over 9,200 of our nationals have left
Libya on 24 special flights, ships, commercial carriers and by
road, since the process began on 26 February," it said in a
release here.
In the past 24 hours, two AI special flights (from
Tripoli), one from Sebha (Libya) and three from Djerba
(Tunisia) have arrived in India.
In a welcome development, a 747 aircraft landed at Sebha
on Friday and has brought home some 350 passengers to Mumbai
and another sortie is being undertaken, it said.
In parallel, 220 Indians returned to Mumbai on Saturday
from Tunisia (via Dubai) on an Emirates flight. Another
chartered Egypt Air and Fly Dubai flights, brought 170 and 190
persons respectively to India from Djerba.
MV Scotia Prince has since sailed back for Benghazi from
Alexandria, Egypt, to bring back the remaining passengers and
is expected to reach Benghazi on Saturday, the ministry said.
MV Red Star One is at Misurata (Libya) and would sail to
Malta with some 400 passengers and arrangements are in place
for flying them to India from Malta on two chartered aircraft
of Kingfisher and Jet Airways.