Foreign and Military Affairs

Some 12,000 Chinese evacuated from Libya

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-02-25 22:03

BEIJING - Some 12,000 Chinese nationals have been evacuated from riot-torn Libya in the ongoing large-scale evacuation operations by Friday morning, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed.

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"The evacuees were either flown back to China or transferred temporarily to politically stable countries neighboring Libya," said the Chinese ministry in a statement late Friday.

Early on Friday, 451 Chinese evacuees were flown back to Beijing from Cairo, Egypt, in two separate chartered Chinese government planes. Before them, 83 other Chinese nationals flew to Beijing or Shanghai from the northern Egyptian port of Alexandria in two commercial flights on Thursday.

Also, more than 4,300 Chinese citizens had been evacuated on two large passenger liners, rented by the Chinese government, which had arrived at the Greek Island of Crete from the Libyan port of Benghazi on Thursday night.

Another 4,900 Chinese nationals have also completed necessary procedures for exiting Libya and are awaiting departure for Crete by ship.

"These evacuees have successfully got aboard ships at the port of Benghazi and are waiting (for the ships) to set sail," said the statement.

The statement also mentioned that about 3,000 other Chinese nationals were arranged to temporarily evacuate from Libya to Tunisia and Egypt by land and would leave for home after finishing customs procedures from border checkpoints in the latter two countries.

Tens of thousands of Chinese nationals had been working or living in Libya when the unrest took hold there last week, most of whom are employees of Chinese companies with businesses in the country.