IOM staff at Tunisia’s border with Libya report that migrants
have begun to cross into Tunisia in efforts to escape the violence
in the North African country and to get back to their home
countries.

Although most of the arrivals have largely been of Tunisian
nationals, migrants of various nationalities have been crossing the
border into Tunisia’s Medenine Governorate requesting
assistance to go back home.

An IOM staffer says local Red Crescent officials reported to him
and a UNHCR official on Tuesday that in addition to several
thousand returning Tunisians, there were some Lebanese, Turkish,
Syrian and three German nationals who had arrived asking for onward
travel assistance.

The local authorities provided transport for the migrants to
Djerba international airport from where they were reportedly able
to depart to their home countries.

With further arrivals in the evening across the Ben Guerdane
border post, IOM staff identified low-cost hotel accommodation for
the migrants of various nationalities, including four Guineans
asking for help to get home, until onward travel assistance could
be organized.

Additional IOM staff will be deployed to the border area today
to help migrants arriving from Libya.

Meanwhile, several governments have asked IOM for assistance to
evacuate their nationals from Libya. With the situation in Libya
itself extremely difficult, IOM is looking at alternative routes
for evacuations.

Libya, both a long-favoured destination as well as transit
country in Africa, has an estimated 1.5 million irregular migrants
in the country alone. Although a significant number are from Egypt,
Tunisia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, West Africa and the Horn of Africa,
there are also migrants from other parts of the world including
Asia. Among them are Filipinos, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis,
Pakistanis and Chinese.

The Organization, however, is appealing to donors to help fund
such humanitarian assistance as they have in the past, the most
recent case being the Lebanon crisis in 2006 when IOM evacuated
more than 13,000 third-country nationals to their home countries,
including Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, another 235 Tunisian migrants have arrived on
Lampedusa on two boats since the last arrival on Tuesday morning,
according to IOM staff there.

A Tunisian fishing boat carrying nearly 200 people arrived late
in the evening despite appalling weather and sea conditions. Among
them were three women accompanied by their husbands with two of the
women heavily pregnant.

IOM staff say the women were in a state of shock due to the
extremely difficult and dangerous journey they had just endured.
They and their husbands are staying in the IOM office in the
migrant reception centre on the island.

Family reunification is increasingly evident as a reason as to
why the Tunisians are leaving for Europe.

An Italian fishing boat that had rescued 37 Tunisians at sea
finally managed to land on Lampedusa this morning after several
failed attempts due to bad weather.

IOM staff say that if the migrants hadn’t been rescued by
the Italian fishing boat, they would have certainly died at
sea.

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

or

Jemini Pandya

Tel: +41 22 717 9486

       +41 79 217 3374

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