AFP/Cairo
More than 25,000 Egyptians have returned from neighbouring Libya since the Islamic State group posted a video earlier this month of the beheadings of Christian compatriots, the foreign ministry said yesterday.
Egypt carried out air strikes against jihadist targets in Libya on February 16 in retaliation for the executions of the 21 Copts and urged its large expatriate workforce to head home for their own safety.
The foreign ministry said 21,407 Egyptians had returned overland through the Sallum border crossing, while another 4,122 had crossed into Tunisia, from where they were flown home on government-chartered flights.
There are no firm figures for the number of Egyptians working in Libya but estimates run into the hundreds of thousands.
Before the Nato-backed uprising that toppled and killed dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, around 1.5 million Egyptians worked in the oil-rich country, mostly in construction and services.
But hundreds of thousands fled that year’s bloodshed and numbers have fallen further amid the turmoil that has gripped Libya ever since.
The country is awash with weapons, and opposing militias are battling for control of its cities and oil wealth.
Libya has two rival governments and parliaments, those recognised by the international community sitting in the far east of the country and the others with ties to Islamists in the capital Tripoli.
Meanwhile Libya’s internationally recognised Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni has said his government would stop dealing with Turkey because it was sending weapons to a rival group in Tripoli so “the Libyan people kill each other”.
“Turkey is a state that is not dealing honestly with us. It’s exporting weapons to us so the Libyan people kill each other,” Thinni told Egyptian TV channel CBC late on Thursday.
A spokesman for Turkey’s Foreign Ministry strongly denied Thinni’s allegations.
“Instead of repeating the same baseless and untrue allegations we advise them to support UN efforts for political dialogue,” spokesman Tanju Bilgic said.
“Our policy vis-a-vis Libya is very clear. We are against any external intervention in Libya and we fully support the ongoing political dialogue process under UN mediation.”
