M A I N   N E W S

It’s been a trip to hell & back for Indians rescued from Libya
Kumar Rakesh/TNS

Two more Air India flights to Tripoli Air India will operate two more flights, one each from Mumbai and Delhi, for evacuating Indians stranded in Libya. The Mumbai flight will return at 8:00 pm on Monday while the Delhi one will arrive at 10:30 pm. — PTI

New Delhi, February 27
For several days, Mubin Qureshi lived in fear of death with bands of armed looters roaming on the streets of Tripoli, the capital of Libya. He along with other immigrants was shut inside a camp by his employer. Even while he headed to board the Air India flight, which last night brought the first group of evacuated Indians, Libyan officials at the airport relieved him of 1,000 Libyan Dinar (about Rs 37,000).

“I am happy to be alive and in my country. I pray that other Indians are also rescued as soon as possible. They are out to rob and hit the immigrants,” the 27-year-old resident of Bijnaur in Uttar Pradesh said. He worked at a factory in the strife-torn country.

Many would empathise with Qureshi’s woes but he considers himself among the luckier Indians living in Libya. Most of the Indians in the first two flights were either living in Tripoli or in its proximity like Qureshi.

With the administrative structure almost non-existent, the Indian embassy is finding it hard to reach out to those living far off the capital. An External Ministry official said the 18,000 estimated Indians currently in Libya were living in 20 pockets and the prevailing conditions made the task of Indian embassy of reaching out to them rather arduous. In the absence of any concrete information and the situation more volatile in the countryside, life could be grimmer for the Indians living there.

“No Indian is safe in Libya. The administration has collapsed. Private armies, police and government security forces are all looting people. And immigrants are the softest targets,” Tarsem (32) of Jalandhar said. He like many other Indians was on a two-year job contract but had to leave midway.

A majority of Indians are the contractual employees working as skilled workers. As the situation worsened in the last few days, they were forced to stay in clusters with other immigrants and stopped from venturing out. So far, over 500 Indian nationals have arrived in India from Tripoli, in two Air India flights.

Meanwhile, 10 state governments have set up help desks at Terminal 2 — reactivated in just 24 hours by DIAL (Delhi International Airport) — to assist with food, accommodation, medical check-up, transport and further travel arrangements of the passengers to their final destinations.

The government has chartered a second passenger ship, LA SUPERBA, with a capacity of 1,600. It is presently berthed in Sicily (Italy) and ready to sail to Libya as soon as port preparations are completed.