Workers rescued, convoys to safety in the rebel capital of Benghazi on a vessel, transported with them little beyond painful accounts of their weeks in limbo by a nearly abandoned port and a collective sense of relief to be out of the way of war.
Conditions, they have left behind them were terrible. Third largest city of the Libya, Misurata, continued to be the theatre of intensive, frequent fighting between forces loyal to colonel Muammar el-Gaddafi and rebels anti-Qathafi of the city. She also faced roadblocks of mortar and rocket fire from troops of Colonel Gaddafi.
While the battles were raging, up to 5,000 migrant workers remained trapped in the city, according to Jeremy r. a. Haslam, head of the team of the International Organization for migration, which chartered the ship entered the port for a second time collect strangers who tried to flee.
The city is also the risk of losing more of its already limited medical support. Misurata, as a large part of the Libya, relied for years on foreign medical workers to assist personnel in its hospitals. A large part of this staff has already left. And foreign nurses on the ship, said many other expected to go quickly.
Prospects for other evacuations were uncertain. Mr. Haslam, said the crew of the Ionian mind, worried about Misurata was too dangerous, threatened not to return for another evacuation. "They think that they push their luck with a third voyage," he said.
Compounding the malaise was a clear sense of mistrust between members of crew and the operation of the ship cruise line. "I am certain that I do not want to go back," said a member of crew on board the ship. The Member of the crew, who asked not be identified because he was afraid of reprisals, said that the crew had not said that they would move in a war zone, and that many of ship is crew remained on the ship only because they were due to pay.
"They told us we were going to the Greece," said crew member. "Not here." They lied to us. ?
All around the Ionian spirit, the scenes of the evacuation were evident, as more than 650 young Ghanaian men slept on the decks of the vessels or collapsed on the tables where tourists would normally enjoy their meals. Also on board were more than 100 Nigerians, 72 Libyan and more small number of other nationalities.
They were a lot of exhausted. Much had been sleeping outdoors for weeks and had expected, anxiety rising, to berth on everything some relief ships who risked Misurata docking.
Isaac Owuso, 33, a construction worker, has offered a mixture of gratitude that he had finally left the city with its deep disappointment about his own fate of the latter. He travelled to Ghana in Libya, he said, to work on projects for the construction of Government Qathafi and earn money for his wife and his child.
When war broke out, he had managed to save $ 2 000 euros and 100 Libyan dinars, which he kept hidden in his clothes. He tried to flee to Misurata overland, he said, but stolen from a control point. He said that he was unaware whether rebel or pro-Qathafi of armed men have inhabited the control point. But he knew that the result.
"Look at me," he said, pulling a lone his pocket dinar note. "This is my life." See me? I have only this money and nothing more. How will be I take care of my family? ?
Crew cabin of the ship, held at the same time, many evacuated Libyan casualties of the siege, including four recent amputees. Some were veterans anti-Qathafi suffering serious injuries.
"God thank you for this ship," said Mustafa Youssif, whose leg was amputated Sunday after he was hit by shrapnel while riding in a van near the streets of Tripoli, one of the fronts of Misurata.
In the other cabins were more victims: a 9-year-old boy hit in the teeth by shrapnel, and an anti-Qathafi sniper fired through his mouth, a man with shell holes.
A bridge has also held several Philippines evacuees, including a group of teachers from the University of Misurata.
The teachers said they had come to the Philippines in December and had not yet been paid their salary by the Government during the war began. The University had closed, and since the bombing of the city by the pro-Qathafi forces, they had survived with the help of Libyan neighbours.
"They gave us food," said Zoe Contreras, 37, Professor of English. "Our neighbours were we giving water." Sometimes they were knocking on our door and then only giving us food.
Not all foreign workers in Misurata had as much chance, they said. A group of nurses evacuation said more than a dozen of their friends and colleagues of Misurata had been missing since mid-March, when pro-Qathafi forces occupy the neighbourhood near their building.
The missing, they said, included Filipino five and four nurses Bangladeshis, Egyptian nurse and her husband and three children. The account noted that the number of victims of the fighting in Misurata, who rebels say killed more than 1,000 people, is recorded, and that there are classes potentially many victims whose fates remain unknown.
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