Another Filipino wounded in Libya


Another Filipino worker, who works for an oil and gas company outside the Libyan capital of Tripoli, was wounded when a mortar round exploded in their compound near the Tripoli International Airport, Manila's top envoy to Libya said Wednesday.
"Our kababayan is lucky he only sustained a shrapnel wound in his right foot. His Sudanese coworker was not—he was killed in the explosion," embassy Charge d'Affaires Elmer Cato said on Facebook.
The incident comes a week after a Filipino was injured in a rocket attack in a neighborhood where more than 200 other Filipinos live and work.
"What happened to our kababayan in Qasr bin Ghashir earlier in the morning underscores the danger that all of us face here in Tripoli as a result of the ongoing fighting just outside its gates," Cato said.
Last week, mortar rounds struck a hospital also in Qasr bin Ghashir where 18 Filipino nurses were working.
Cato said the embassy also received reports that six other Filipinos found themselves in the middle of intense clashes in Ain Zara while several more in another compound that was taken over by armed men also asked the Philippine government's help to convince their employers to move them to safer grounds.
Libya does not have a functioning government and is plagued by civil unrest and armed hostilities.
Despite repeated appeals from the Philippine government to leave, many of them continued to hold on to their jobs in Libya despite the widespread violence, citing lack of economic opportunities back home.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it will continue to enforce voluntary evacuation and even called on the relatives of those Filipinos who are in Libya to convince their loved ones to return to the Philippines as the violence and armed conflict showed no sign of easing.
"Some of us may not be lucky the next time rockets or mortars rain in on Tripoli. Before the fighting intensifies further and before it gets closer to where many of our kababayan are in Tripoli, we plead to them and to their families in the Philippines to please seriously consider our offer to bring them home while we still can," Cato said. —KBK, GMA New

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