Foreigners flee Libya

Philippines Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said he was heading to Tunisia on Thursday to help organize the evacuation of some 13,000 Filipinos from neighboring Libya.

The announcement came as fighting raged between militias seeking to control the international airport that serves the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

Manila ordered the evacuation on July 20, with in hours of the discovery of the beheaded remains of one of it citizens in the eastern city of Benghazi. On Wednesday, a Filipina nurse was abducted outside her home in Tripoli and gang raped.

However, many of the Filipinos living in the country, employed mainly in construction and hospitals, have refused to leave.

Del Rosario said the operation was largely a repeat of the 2011 mission that preceded the toppling of late dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

"Our major challenge, as in 2011, is to convince our folks that they must leave Libya at the soonest time to avoid the perils of a highly exacerbating situation there," he said.

The US and Canada have closed their embassies in Tripoli, while countries including Britain, France, Germany and Egypt over the weekend advised their nationals to leave immediately. France on Wednesday withdrew some of its own citizens, as well as British nationals.

Special forces aboard Greek ship

Greece sent a navy frigate to assist in its evacuation efforts, with Athens saying it would oversee the removal of some 200 people, including Greeks and other nationalities, from Libya. A Greek special forces unit was said to be on board the vessel, Salamis.

Meanwhile, Spain said it was pulling its ambassador and embassy staff out of the North African country. "All the information we have is that the situation in Libya will get much worse very quickly," Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo told his national parliament.

Around Tripoli, a coalition of groups, mainly Islamists, has been trying to force former rebels hailing from the mountain city of Zintan to cede control of the airport, which they have been in charge of since Gadhafi's ouster.

In Benghazi, forces loyal to Gen. Khalifa Haftar - considered a rogue former government fighter - are battling Islamist militias. On Wednesday, the Libyan Red Crescent said it had recovered the bodies of some 35 people killed there.

rc/dr (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)