Libya - Latest Updates Part II ( Archived) (937)

Nice sunny day with clear blue skies here...

You're quite right Gabrielle, my point for listing this here is that usually military in countries about to get involved in combat situations usually carry out training exercises. I have no proof of this but it could have been something of the sort.

As advised earlier, the Maltese Catamaran Maria Dolores arrived from Sirte with another 600 evacuees from Libya.

The vessel belonging to Virtu Ferries which has just docked in the Grand Harbour, Valletta, Malta, made its first trip from Sirte since the evacuation process started. Sirte is a city centred between Tripoli and Benghazi and the seat of national government institutions in Libya.

The evacuees hailed from various nationalities. They will be staying at a local Hotel. There were no Maltese reported on board.

In the mean time Malta International Airport continues to struggle with all the extra flights in place to repatriate all the approximately 13,000 evacuees reaching Malta till now.

In a visit this morning, I could see 2 massive Boing 763 planes belonging to China Eastern Airlines and Shanghai Airlines respectively. Daily direct flights to Shangai have been operating over the last week in order to take back several thousand Chinese nationals arriving earlier on various Ships. The former airline (hardly ever operating from Malta) has just today 4 different planned flights.

Note: As I write this, a military helicopter is flying overhead

News comes from Al Jazeera of continued fighting in Brega, a day after clashes between anti and pro-Gaddafi forces left at least 10 civilians dead.

"Around two hours ago, warplanes dropped a bomb in the area between the oil company and the residential area," Fattah al-Moghrabi, director of supplies for Brega hospital, told the AFP news agency.

"As far as I know, there were no casualties," he said.

Brega was yesterday the scene of heavy fighting but is still holding strong.

The 599 evacuees that arrived on the above Ferry were in fact employees of Hyundai and are mainly of Korean Nationality. It is also reported that the sister Catamaran "San Gwann" is now in Sirte to pick up another 200.

The crew of the "Maria Dolores" reported the situation calm, despite reports of fighting nearby.

Virtu Ferries reports that it has already conducted eight round trips to Libya, mostly to Tripoli but also to Misurata and now Sirte.



Picture: Some of the Korean Employees disembarking off the "Maria Dolores" this morning.

Around 400 US Marines are reported to be in Greece for Libya deployment.

The US Marines have been dispatched to a US base in Greece ahead of deployment on warships off Libya, an American military spokesman said today.

"The operation is part of forces reposition in the region... with regard to Libya," said Paul Farley, spokemsan for the US Souda base on the island of Crete.

He said the troops from North Carolina arrived at the base on Wednesday and would later join two US warships in Mediterranean.

As I reported yesterday, the "USS Kearsarge" and the "USS Ponce" have cleared the Suez Canal and have steamed into the Mediterranean. If this news is correct, the Naval ships will be heading to the US Naval Support Base in Souda Bay, Crete to pick up the Marines.

The Kearsarge amphibious ready group, with about 800 marines, a fleet of helicopters and medical facilities, could support humanitarian efforts as well as military operations.