Ambassador oversees safe departure on HMS Enterprise before returning to close down UK embassy in Tripoli
HMS Enterprise is on her way to Libya Photo: ALAMY
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
The Telegraph
5:46PM BST 03 Aug 2014
6 Comments
More than 100 British citizens were evacuated from Libya on Sunday on a Royal Navy support ship as fighting between different "revolutionary" factions engulfed the capital, Tripoli.
The HMS Enterprise, a survey ship, was diverted from routine operations in the Mediterranean on Saturday and sent to Tripoli after the British embassy decided to close down operations in Libya.
It docked off-shore on Sunday morning, with a motor launch sent to the harbour to pick up "110 British and a few other nationals", the ambassador, Michael Aron, said. He and a handful of other embassy staff will stay in the country for a "few more days", though consular services will close from Monday.
Other embassies, including America's, had already closed down and pulled out staff. Mr Aron and his key diplomats had hoped to stay on but on Friday the Foreign Office also decided to withdraw its officials, after the fighting approached the main British residence compound in the west of the city.
Mr Aron personally oversaw the naval evacuation yesterday.
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A convoy containing non-essential embassy staff that was attempting to leave for Tunisia the previous weekend came under fire in what appeared to be a criminal attack on the road west of Tripoli to the border.
No-one was hurt, and the evacuation was eventually completed successfully. However, British residents of Tripoli said they feared that gangs would target the road as they knew that with the main airport closed it was the main exit for foreigners, who might be expected to carry valuables with them.
Officials said that for security reasons details would not be given on how and when Mr Aron and the other diplomats would now leave.
Overnight, 22 more people had been killed around Tripoli airport, as competing militias fight for control in both the east and west of the country.
The fighting in Libya has set the Islamist and non-Islamist factions from the western-supported uprising against Col Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 against each other. The airport is currently held by Zintan brigade, which is based in the town of the same name, and is anti-Islamist.
It is being attacked by the Misurata brigade, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood and other "soft Islamist" political factions.
The Zintan brigade is in unofficial alliance with an anti-Islamist group within the army, led by a former Gaddafi-era officer who spent years in exile in the United States, Khalifa Haftar. It has attacked the bases of extremist Islamist factions who are powerful in Benghazi and neighbouring cities in the east, but it has been condemned by senior government officials for operating without orders.
A newly elected parliament, in which Islamists make up a smaller faction than under its predecessor, the General National Congress, met for the first time on Saturday, in the city of Tobruk in the far east of the country, which is an anti-Islamist stronghold.
The Foreign Office is advising against all travel to Libya. British Airways cancelled all flights last Wednesday, though some other airlines are still flying to Misurata airport and Tripoli's second airport, Mitega.
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