CAIRO: Tripoli has given Cairo a green light to carry out 37 evacuation flights for Egyptians caught up in the Libyan uprising, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Wednesday.
Authorization for the flights was given to Aboul Gheit during a conversation with his Libyan counterpart, Moussa Koussa, Egypt’s state-run MENA news agency reported.
Some 1.5 million Egyptians work in Libya, according to the ministry, with many coming from poorer districts where entire families depend on remittances from abroad to live.
Thousands have streamed back through the Salloum border crossing on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast into oil-producing eastern Libya where opponents of Moammar Qaddafi’s regime appeared on Wednesday to be firmly in control.
Egypt also plans to send ships to Tunisia to pick up nationals who fled Libya by going west, Aboul Gheit said, adding that Tunis has agreed to let fleeing Egyptians enter the country without visas.
