RAS JDIR, Tunisia – Soldiers fired into the air in an effort to subdue a wave of Egyptian labourers desperate to escape Libya yesterday, as the refugee crisis created by the rebellion against Muammar Gadafy escalated.
Aid workers threw bottles of water and loaves of bread over the wall to a sea of men surging towards the safety of Tunisian soil, in a futile attempt to calm them.
Young Tunisians with branches kept them from clambering over the wall between border posts.
Tunisian officials were processing entrants as fast as they could, as medics plucked fainting men from the heaving mass sweeping over the chest-high gate.
Panicking migrants passed their bulging suitcases, rugs and blankets overhead at the gate where soldiers with sticks tried to hold them back. A Tunisian officer with a loud hailer shouted reassurances that they would be let in.
Order looked close to collapse at one brief point in the overflowing border compound on the Tunisian side, where throngs of men jostled and long lines of exhausted migrants in torn jackets and headcloths queued for water, food and toilets.
Troops fired warning shots in the air and officers unholstered their automatic pistols.
Many tens of thousands more are expected to flee west from the violence that has consumed Libya as Gadafy’s regime teeters on the verge of collapse.
“We can’t see beyond that building on the Libyan side but we think there are many more waiting to come through,” said Ayman Gharaibeh, team leader for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at Ras Jdir.
“The numbers are daunting,” Mr Gharaibeh said.
The last couple of days had seen an upsurge and refugees were now crossing at a rate of up to 15,000 a day, he added.
There was no one to co-ordinate relief and establish order on the Libyan side and the UNHCR judged it was not safe to go over there.
Médecins sans Frontières and the Red Cross-Red Crescent were trying to liaise with the Libyans to slow the flow.
“It looks like it’s going to get worse . . . They are going to break down the wall in the end,” Mr Gharaibeh said grimly.
About 70,000 refugees had entered Tunisia since the uprising began in Libya and only an estimated 20 per cent had been repatriated, the high commissioner team leader added. – (Reuters)