Refugees flood into Tunisia

At first it was dozens of foreigners, most of them Egyptian laborers, teetering under the weight of plastic-wrapped boxes or suitcases they carried on their backs as they made their way past customs guards and immigration officers into relative safety in Tunisia.

Volunteers, some from the Tunisian equivalent of the Boy Scouts, handed them bottles of milk and sandwiches with gobs of tomato sauce and tuna.

Then the crowds grew larger and larger. Busloads of Chinese engineers. Turkish businessmen. A smattering of Koreans. A wealthy Tunisian in a late-model BMW.

And still more people came, the numbers reaching into the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.

By late Friday, a full-blown refugee crisis had emerged on the Tunisian border. A sea of people filled the roadway out of the border crossing. They dragged plastic bags full of belongings. They wrapped themselves in purple blankets. They moved in huge waves, the scale of their exodus an illustration of the level of turmoil mounting across the border in Libya, where a political revolt, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, has torn the nation and cost hundreds of lives.

“We kept staying put and staying put, hoping that things would get better, calmer,” said Ahmad Abdo, a 29-year-old electrician from Egypt. “But we noticed that every day, things were getting worse.”

He huddled in the cold with a group of compatriots, their belongings spread out on the ground. They were among the thousands of people gathered near the border, awaiting a bus trip to a nearby tent city or permission to sleep at one of two customs warehouses Tunisians had turned into makeshift shelters.

The machinery of crisis management has kicked into gear. The Health Ministry announced it was reinforcing medical teams assisting those arriving and in need of care. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has deployed aid teams.

Many of the Egyptians arrived destitute. They worked hand-to-mouth in Libya, and finally decided to make a break for it when the work dried up.

Tunisians appeared eager to welcome them, motivated by the new spirit of civic pride and public service that accompanied the nation’s January revolution that ousted President Zine el Abidine ben Ali. Families agreed to host some of the refugees as they awaited passage back to their countries. One volunteer wore a suit and tie. He was a lawyer and had stopped by after work to lend a hand.

A group of young Tunisian men from the nearby town of Ben Gardane climbed aboard a bus waving Tunisian and Egyptian alongside the old tricolor Libyan flag, which Moammar Kadafi had replaced after he took power in 1969.

“The people want an overthrow of the regime,” they chanted, the slogan inspiring Arab revolutionaries from Algeria to Yemen.

Mohammad Ibrahim, a portly, graying 49-year-old Egyptian who had run a vegetable stand in Tripoli, said he was exhausted by his flight, traumatized by the violence in the capital, but looking forward to returning to Egypt after 2 1/2 years, the first time since an uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak.

Ibrahim stood up and tried to shake off his fatigue. He looked across the expanse of hungry and shivering refugees.

“The revolution,” he said, “is for everybody here.”

daragahi@latimes.com