The Philippines was preparing today to evacuate 13,000 citizens from Libya as violence continued to rage and a Filipino worker was beheaded and a nurse gang-raped there.
At the same time, Greece was sending a warship to evacuate some of its nationals as well as some from other countries, while Spain is pulling out most of its embassy staff.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario was heading to neighbouring Tunisia to organise an evacuation as fighting resumed between militias seeking to control the Libyan capital's crippled international airport.
Del Rosario said he was repeating a 2011 mission that evacuated thousands of Filipino workers during the uprising that toppled Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.
"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 told reporters in Manila.
The Philippines ordered an evacuation on July 20, hours after the discovery in the eastern city of Benghazi of the beheaded remains of a Filipino construction worker who had been abducted.
Manila also imposed a travel ban to the North African country, which has been plagued by violence since Kadhafi's overthrow.
A Filipina nurse was abducted yesterday by a gang of youths outside her residence in Tripoli and gang-raped before being released two hours later, the foreign department said.
Despite the dangers, del Rosario said many of the Filipinos, mostly construction and health workers, are refusing to leave because they would be unemployed back home.
Only a few more than 700 had left Libya by yesterday, despite the rapidly deteriorating situation, as warring factions battle for control of key population centres.
Del Rosario said he was flying to Tunisia's Djerba island to "try to convince our people to leave (Libya) because the situation there is very dangerous.
"We are in the process of engaging ships from Malta that would pick up our people from Benghazi, Misrata and hopefully Tripoli then return to Malta for air transport to Manila," he said.
While each vessel could carry up to 1,500 people, he said the government was still negotiating safe passage through these ports.
