Stranded migrant workers, troops clash in refugee camp

Ras Ajdir (AP):

Scuffles erupted yesterday at a transit camp for thousands of migrant workers who fled fighting in Libya and are stranded in neighbouring Tunisia.

Tunisian troops pushed back hundreds of angry labourers from Bangladesh who tried to force their way into a United Nations storage facility at the camp. The protesters said they are not getting enough to eat and aren't being repatriated quickly enough. At one point, troops beat demonstrators next to them before the situation was brought under control.

Troops asked journalists observing the confrontations to leave the camp.

In all, more than 250,000 migrant workers have fled Libya for neighbouring countries, primarily Tunisia and Egypt, since an uprising against Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi erupted more than three weeks ago, migration officials said.

While tens of thousands have already been flown home by their governments, thousands more, mainly from Bangladesh and several African countries, have had to wait for aid agencies to repatriate them because their countries do not have the means to do so.

The exodus from Libya has remained steady over the past few days, with between 2,000 and 3,000 reaching Tunisia every day, said Firas Kayal, a spokesman for the United Nations' agency for refugees. The new arrivals are taken to a transit camp several miles from the Tunisian-Libyan border, where more than 2,300 tents have been pitched to shelter them.

A majority at the camp are from Bangladesh, and their evacuation has been more difficult to arrange, in part because of the distance of travel involved.