Despite heavy shelling of the port area of the besieged Libyan city
of Misrata on Tuesday, about 935 migrants and Libyans have been
rescued and are now safely en route to Benghazi.

The shelling of the port area meant the IOM-chartered boat, the
Red Star One, was forced to delay docking until Wednesday morning,
once the situation was calmer.

Among the 935 evacuees are 848 Nigeriens and small groups of
Sudanese, Egyptians and Tunisians as well as 30 Libyan medical
cases and 50 accompanying family members.

Also on board are a group of journalists being taken out of
Misrata including a French journalist who had been shot in the neck
and is now in intensive care.

The IOM-chartered boat left Misrata late afternoon and is due to
arrive in Benghazi on Thursday morning.

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Up to 1,500 migrants are thought to still be in Misrata in need
of evacuation. IOM staff on the boat estimate that 500 migrants are
still in the port area with port authorities saying that many
migrants ran away from the area due to the fighting and are likely
to head back to the port shortly.

This fifth mission to Misrata carried 160 tons of food and
medical supplies, including two new ambulances to help in the
transportation of casualties from hospitals in Misrata to the port
for medical evacuation.

A specialized medical team of 11 is on board the Red Star One to
take care of the war-wounded, all hospital referrals, including
four patients requiring intensive care.

So far, IOM has rescued 5,512 people, the vast majority stranded
migrant workers from more than 21 nationalities, including
Nigeriens, Bangladeshis, Ghanaians, Nigerians, Egyptians and
Tunisians as well as hundreds of Libyans, many of them
war-wounded.

From Benghazi, IOM provides the migrants onward land
transportation to the Egyptian border at Sallum. Since it began a
land evacuation from Benghazi to Sallum on 3 March, IOM has
evacuated more than 8,000 migrants from Benghazi to the Egyptian
border before taking them to their home countries.

IOM's humanitarian evacuation programme out of Misrata is funded
by the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civilian
Protection Office (ECHO), the US State Department's Bureau of
Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), Britain's Department for
International Development (DFID), Germany, Ireland and
Australia.

Nearly 626,000 people have fled Libya and crossed into Tunisia,
Egypt, Niger, Algeria, Chad, and Sudan with some of them putting
their lives in great danger to reach the shores of Italy and
Malta.

Elsewhere in Libya, IOM continues to assist in the evacuation by
road of thousands of stranded Sudanese, Egyptian and Nigerien
migrants from the capital Tripoli to the Tunisian border.

IOM has appealed for USD 160 million dollars for its response to
the Libyan crisis with much of the funding to provide evacuation
assistance from both inside and outside Libya. To date, the
Organization has received close to USD 68 million, which have been
spent on operations that have helped more than 117,000 migrants
return to their home countries and evacuate many thousands more
from inside Libya to Egypt and Tunisia.

For further information, please contact:

Jean Philippe Chauzy

IOM Geneva

Tel: + 41 22 717 9361

       + 41 79 285 4366

E-mail: "mailto:pchauzy@iom.int">pchauzy@iom.int

Jemini Pandya

Tel: + 41 22 717 9486

       + 41 79 217 3374

E-mail: "mailto:jpandya@iom.int">jpandya@iom.int

or

Jumbe Omari Jumbe

Tel: + 41 22 717 9405

       + 41 79 812 7734

E-mail: "mailto:jjumbe@iom.int">jjumbe@iom.int