All 6 Filipinos trapped in Libya safe, Embassy says

FILE: One of Al Afia Clinic’s emergency vehicles after rockets hit the medical facility on Wednesday. (PNA Photo)

MANILA — The continued conflict in the outskirts of Tripoli Friday has trapped six Filipinos inside their neighborhood, the Philippine Embassy in Tripoli said Saturday.

Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Elmer Cato confirmed that the six are safe.

“We just talked to them, they are still there, fighting stopped at 1 am but has resumed. They did not request to be extracted,” he told the Philippine News Agency (PNA) at around 12:30 p.m. (Tripoli time).

Prior to this, mortars also struck on Wednesday the Al Afia Clinic, located about 29 kilometers south of Tripoli where 18 Filipino nurses were working. Cato said all are safe and evacuated by their employers but they still refused to be repatriated.

“Despite all our efforts, we just could not convince them to take our offer to bring them home while we still can,” Cato said.

He added that they will continue to go where they are, call them, and engage them online.

“We were at the St. Francis Church yesterday to talk to them but still our kababayans would rather stay,” he said.

The Libyan National Army headed by Commander Khalifa Haftar continues to push forward since it waged a two-week military campaign to take Tripoli from fighters loyal to the United Nations-backed government.

Cato said a number of the Filipinos residing in Tripoli have been in Libya for a long time and some are veterans of the 2011 and 2014 wars and the other fightings that came after.

“They are convinced that the level of the fighting will just be the same and that they will again emerge out of this unscathed,” he said.

Despite this, he echoed the Embassy’s repeated calls for Filipinos in the capital to avail of the government’s repatriation offer.

“We would like to appeal to the families in the Philippines of our kababayans here in Tripoli to help us convince them to go home,” he urged their families in the country.

“We understand they are here to provide for their families back home but the situation here is becoming increasingly dangerous for them. We want to bring our kababayans home alive,” he added.

The government expressed hope that the number of requests for repatriation would increase.

As of posting, the Embassy has so far received only 22 requests, including the seven Filipinos they repatriated earlier.

“We have received some queries from other Filipinos but they are still undecided,” he said.

The Philippine government, Cato said, is ready to evacuate as many as possible of the 1,000 Filipinos residing in the capital “but as the fighting gets nearer and nearer, the window for us to be able to get them out to safety becomes smaller.”

“When the fighting reaches us, we may no longer be able to do anything,” he pointed out, adding the conflict continues to be “intense”.

He said they could now hear the faint sound of explosions at the Embassy.

“We were not hearing those last week,” he said.

According to two UN officials, escalation of fighting in Libya was “the worst in years.”

“An increasing number of children are at imminent risk of injury or death because of the escalation in fighting,” the joint statement of Henrietta Fore, UNICEF Executive Director, and Virginia Gamba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict read.

On April 16, a neighborhood in Tripoli, where more than 200 Filipinos are residing, was jolted by a rocket barrage, killing four and wounding 23 others, including a Filipino who was injured on his forehead. That was the first time Tripoli proper was targeted since the fighting began early April.