Over half of Indians in Libya evacuated: govt

In stepped-up operations, more than 50% out of 18,000 Indians would have been pulled out of strife-torn Libya since the evacuation process started 10 days ago, the 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 issued in New Delhi.

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 yesterday and has brought home some 350 passengers to Mumbai and another sortie is being undertaken, it said.

In parallel, 220 Indians returned to Mumbai today 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 today, 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.