Libya Chaos : Thousands doing all they can to flee Libya

GHULAM Rabbani stretched his hands through the barbed wire
to grab a piece of bread offered to him and wolfed it down.
His parched throat took two gulps of water from a bottle before
passing it to the others who were just as thirsty.

“There are more than 10,000 of us here waiting to get out and we are very hungry and very thirsty,” said the 26-year-old Bangladeshi, who had been waiting for three days at the Libyan-Tunisian border crossing to get out of strife-torn Tripoli.

The gulps of water and piece of bread were his first “meal” in three days.

Tuesday was the first time Tu­­nisian volunteers had come to the border gate and they threw bottles of waters, loaves of bread and packets of biscuits to the thousands waiting to cross into Tunisia.

Four months ago, Ghulam had come to Libya to work. But after the violence and shootings he had seen in the capital, he is not sure if he’ll ever return.

As it is, he said he was lucky to escape with his life.

Following close on the heels of Tunisia and Egypt’s success in ousting their respective leaders through popular uprisings, the Libyans tried to do the same to get rid with their leader Muammar Gaddafi.

But Gaddafi was defiant and fought back using guns, planes and helicopters to quell the uprising, resulting in over 2,000 deaths and thousands more injured.

Since the violence erupted, the foreign workers had been scrambling to get out of the oil-rich country.

The United Nations estimated that about 100,000 foreigners had left Libya in the past week. With about 20,000 waiting to flee Libya through the Tunisian border, the Tunisian immigration and border control had had its hands full trying to cope.

Some foreigners who had been waiting in the rain and biting cold for days were so desparate that they threw their bags over the border wall.

Then, they tried to climb over the wall or push through the gate to get out but were beaten back by the Tunisian army and volunteers who tried to force some semblance of order amid a chaotic situation.

Tunisian volunteer Nabil said every night for the past week before he went to bed, he would think of the foreigners waiting and freezing in the winter cold at the border.

Yesterday at noon (7pm Malaysian time), Tunisian border guards relented and opened the entry point, allowing thousands to cross over.