Romania steps up Libya evacuation efforts

A Romanian military aircraft landed at the airport in Tripoli, and another airplane landed at 5 pm at the airport in the capital of Malta, where it will stay for an undetermined period.

A group of Romanian citizens have gathered at the airport of Tripoli and will be soon evacuated.

Following the European Union’s activation mechanism of monitoring and information for civil protection, the Minister of National Defence, Gabriel Oprea, gave his approval so that citizens of other states could be taken on board of the Romanian military aircrafts along with Romanian citizens.

In their first shipping, the Romanian military pilots evacuated 56 people, including seven children.

Ten of the passengers on that flight were Bulgarian citizens and one Libyan residing in Romania.

On the airport of the Libyan capital consular officials of the Embassy of Romania provide specialized assistance to all Romanian citizens wishing to be boarded on the aircraft sent by the Ministry of National Defence.

Another military aircraft took off from Bucharest, heading Malta, on Friday afternoon.

So far 211 Romanian citizens have been deported from Libya.

According to the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Doris Mircea, about 500 Romanian citizens were located in Libya, out of whom 47 are mixed families, and the rest belong to some companies.

‘At the Romanian Embassy in Tripoli 450 requests for consular assistance and information have been recorded, out of which 220 were requests for information on how to leave the area’, Doris Mircea, the General Manager of Communication of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs encourages all Romanian citizens who are still in Libya to repatriate urgently, as long as such actions can be safely undertaken and the institution makes constant efforts to facilitate this.

In order to increase the efficiency of the adopted measures all the evacuation solutions, terrestrial or marine, including those facilitated through European consular cooperation mechanism there are taken into account, without exception.

Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MTTLC, MA Student, Bucharest University