TUNISIA: More repatriation flights needed - UNHCR official

Record ID: 345326

  • Title: TUNISIA: More repatriation flights needed - UNHCR official
  • Date: 15th March 2011
  • Summary: RAS JDIR CAMP, TUNISIA (MARCH 14, 2011) (REUTERS) CAMP IN RAS JDIR MORE OF TENTS EVACUEES OUTSIDE THE TENTS EVACUEES IN QUEUES WAITING FOR FOOD RATIONS (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNHCR SPOKESPERSON FIRAS KAYAL, SAYING: ''Right now we have 17,000 people in this camp, in the UNHCR set up camp in Shousha and there are daily departures of 1,000 persons but what we witnessed i
  • Embargoed: 30th March 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Tunisia, Tunisia
  • Country: Tunisia
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA99XW6YA9QV5QUH3D5H3TWJPQE
  • Story Text: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Monday (March 14) there has been a small increase in the number of evacuees from Libya staying in the Shousha camp in Ras Jdir on the Tunisia-Libya border.
    Firas Kayal, a UNHCR spokesperson at the camp, said there are currently 17,000 evacuees and the numbers have been increasing by a thousand everyday for the past three days.
    "What we witnessed in the last several days is that the number of persons arriving are more than the number of persons departing, so in a way the flights departing are not keeping pace with the number of new arrivals,'' Kayal said.
    Some 14,000 are from Bangladesh alone and the rest from Sub Saharan African countries like Mali and Ghana and Sudan and Nigeria. Kayyal said that some 2,000 nationals of Ghana had arrived in the camp overnight.
    He said the reason for the increase was that there were not enough repatriation flights for the migrant workers who fled Libya's violence. He said the priority now was for the repatriation of the Bangladeshi nationals.
    Kayyal said the UNHCR was chartering several Jumbo 747 jets over the next week to make ten flights a day to repatriate the Bangladeshi nationals.
    Some 123,000 migrant workers have so far crossed from Libya in Tunisia since the fighting began almost a month ago. The majority of them were Egyptians who were repatriated last week.
    Some African nationals are calling on the United Nations to grant them asylum status because they are afraid to go back to their countries were there are ethnic tensions like in Nigeria and Somalia.
    Evelyn who fled with her husband and one year old baby girl said she has nothing to return to at her home state of Biafra in Nigeria.
    ''We are still waiting for them to help us. We want them to grant us refugee in another country. Nigeria is very bad, we can't go back to Nigeria. We have nothing, we lost everything we had in Libya,'' said Evelyn who was giving her baby girl, Ability, a bath outside their tent."
    On the border crossing, evacuees kept streaming through on Monday. One Egyptian evacuee said that he saw ''a lot of artillery tanks and army checkpoints every one hundred metres'' along the road from Libya to the Tunisian border.
    Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi initially lost control over large swathes of the oil exporting North African country, but over the past week, military momentum has shifted back in their favour.
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