20110224
Xinhua
BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Governments around the world scrambled to evacuate their citizens from unrest-hit Libya on Wednesday.

Two military planes have brought some 400 French nationals back to Paris from Libya early Wednesday. A third plane was sent to Libya later in the day.

According to the French Foreign Ministry, there were about 500 to 550 French nationals in Libya.

The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry on Wednesday announced that its first charter plane has brought 118 Russians back to Moscow from Libya, and it is preparing the next evacuation by a vessel to Turkey.

Russia has sent four charter planes to evacuate Russian nationals from Libya. According to the ministry, about 1,263 people were going to be evacuated by charter planes, including 563 Russians, and citizens of Serbia and Turkey.

Turkey has launched "the most comprehensive evacuation operation in history" by sending planes, ferry boats and buses to bring back thousands of nationals from unrest-hit Libya, officials said Wednesday.

There were more than 25,000 Turkish citizens working in Libya before chaos began last week. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Wednesday that 5,099 Turks had been evacuated within the past 72 hours, of them, 3,035 people were brought back by two ferries.

Turkish companies based in Libya were also hiring chartered planes to evacuate their employees, but since chartered flights were barred from Libyan airports, the evacuees had to be brought to Egypt and Tunisia by bus first.

The Spanish oil company Repsol chartered a plane that carried 131 people from Tripoli to Madrid, evacuating all its staff from Tripoli. The Spanish government said it was still contacting its citizens in Libya, which totaled about 300.

Earlier on Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said a ferry with a capacity of roughly 575 people was now docked in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, to evacuate American citizens.

"Onboard as we speak are U.S. private citizens, roughly 35 members of the embassy delegation, including non-essential official personnel and family members," Said Crowley, adding that the ship was expected to leave soon.

The U.S. government estimates there are several thousand Americans living in Libya.

On Wednesday almost 800 Italian residents in Libya were urgently evacuated by plane, while a warship would be rescuing the remaining 150 living in more troublesome areas, according to local reports in Italy.

The British government said Wednesday it would send a Royal Navy frigate and a charter plane to bring around 500 British nationals back home.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon announced Tuesday that the Canadian government hoped to begin flying Canadian citizens out of the riot-torn Libya before Thursday.

Canada' s Foreign Affairs Ministry believes there are about 500 Canadians in Libya, mainly working in the country' s oil fields.

China sent two charter planes on Wednesday and early Thursday to evacuate its nationals from Libya. Besides, four ocean liners, hired by Chinese embassies in Greece and Malta, were on their way to the waters near Libya, the ministry said.

As the number of its nationals wishing to leave Libya continued to rise, the South Korean government decided to arrange a special flight to the northern African nation to get them back, an official with the foreign ministry told Xinhua on Wednesday.

Some 1,000 South Koreans are currently in Libya to work on construction sites.

The Belgian government on Wednesday issued a statement, calling on all its nationals to leave Libya by the earliest time possible.

The Romanian government would soon send a military aircraft and a charter plane to evacuate 450 Romanian nationals from Libya, Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi said Wednesday.

The Romanian citizens in Libya would be firstly evacuated by a military aircraft from the Tripoli airport to Malta and then by charter plane to Romania, Baconschi said.

Brazil's Foreign Ministry was in talks on evacuating 183 Brazilian citizens from Benghazi, the second most important city of the riot-torn Libya, the government news agency Agencia Brasil reported on Wednesday.

According to Agencia Brasil, negotiations started on Tuesday and the evacuation of Brazilians was expected to occur on Friday.

On the same day, the European Union activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism to support the evacuation of EU citizens from Libya.

Through the EU Commission's Monitoring and Information Center ( MIC), all countries participating in the mechanism had been notified of the possibility for closer cooperation on evacuation operations at the EU level, said a press release.

The EU commission estimated that there were about 10,000 EU citizens in Libya.

The UN Security Council on Tuesday said it regretted over the deaths of people in the mass protests in Libya, and Brazilian UN Ambassador Maria Luiza Riberto Viotti, who holds the rotating Security Council presidency for February, called on the Libyan authorities to take the responsibility to protect the Libyan people.

She also called on the Libyan authorities to ensure the safety of all foreigners in the country and facilitate their evacuation from the country.

Libyan protesters took to the streets last week in a bid to put an end to the 41-year rule of Muammar Gaddafi, plunging the North African country into chaos and bloodshed. So far, hundreds of people have been killed in the clashes.