(Photo by Amany Kamal)
By Sarah El-Sheikh
Cairo International Airport has received two flights on Saturday morning carrying 522 Egyptian passengers from Djerba Airport in Tunisia on EgyptAir flights.
The ongoing transfer processes of returning Egyptians from Libya have reached 37 flights following the release of “Islamic State” video showing the killings of 20 Coptic Egyptians. Many Egyptian workers in Libya, however, prefer to cross the Salloum border to return to Egypt rather than using airplanes, due to expensive flight tickets.
Matruh’s security general Anany Hamoudah told official news agency MENA that 468 Egyptians have crossed to Egypt through the Salloum border on Friday.
“Among the returnees, 330 had legal papers while 138 did not have legal papers,” he said. The number of Egyptians returning from the Libyan border has reached 29,047, he added.
Egypt’s foreign ministry says it is currently counting the number of Egyptians on the Libya-Egyptian border, to offer the sufficient flights accordingly, in coordination with the Ministry of Aviation. Libya has been witnessing a rising insurgency by different rebel groups and militias, increasing the use of weapons since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. The attacks included killing and injures of Egyptians working there across different parts of the country.
Islamic State (IS) is a radical Islamist group that has executed numerous of terror attacks in eastern Syria and across northern and western Iraq. The group’s division in Libya released a video in mid-February, allegedly showing the beheading of 20 Egyptian workers.
