Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert F. del Rosario arrived from Libya Tuesday afternoon onboard an Emirates Airlines flight after he and a DFA team brought to safety some 400 Filipinos Sunday.
Secretary del Rosario went to Tunisia on Saturday morning to personally oversee the repatriation operations to evacuate Filipino nationals from Libya. He then proceeded by plane to Djerba, which is the city nearest to the Libyan border.
On Sunday morning, Secretary del Rosario, Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Esteban Conejos Jr., an embassy officer and driver traveled overland to Libya.
After reaching the Philippine Embassy in Tripoli and visiting the embassy's relocation site, he gathered the Filipinos awaiting repatriation and quickly organized a convoy of 40 vans and buses to bring some 400 OFWs to the Tunisian border and safety before nightfall.
On the phone from Djebra, Tunisia, Secretary del Rosario said "We're on top of the situation in Libya. We're fully deployed and we have a strategy."
Pursuant to Secretary del Rosario's instructions, the Philippine Embassy in Greece chartered a ship to repatriate Filipinos awaiting extraction at the port city of Benghazi in northeastern Libya. The vessel "Ionian Queen" is due to arrive in Benghazi today at 9:00 a.m. local time (2:00 p.m. Manila time) and will transport the OFWs to the island of Crete, where a DFA crisis team is waiting to assist them in their onward journey to the Philippines.
Click here for original version of news report on the DFA website.
