Wednesday, October 4, 2000 GAMBIANS INJURED IN LIBYA An unconfirmed number of Gambians have been left injured following clashes in Tripoli and other cities in Libya between angry Libyans and immigrants from other African states. Trouble flared between Nigerians and Libyans in the Gargarish area of Tripoli, on September 30 shortly after the celebrations of Libya's El-Fateh revolution anniversary. The violence prompted the evacuation of several thousand Nigerians including Ghanaians and Congolese from Gargarish area to a camp at Hai Islami in Tripoli by the Libyan authorities. According to a report sent to the Gambian foreign office by Muhamad Lamin B Jammeh, counsel general at the Gambian embassy in Libya, fighting has escalated in Libya in the past three days. Mr Jammeh said "some of our citizens were attacked in streets and others in their residences, stabbed with knives, their money seized, some beaten with sticks and their properties were looted. The situation is getting worse." The Daily Observer also gathered that the black Chadian community in Tripoli were also attacked. They were reportedly attacked in the city of Zawia, about 30km from western Tripoli. According to our sources, on September 26, an armed Libyan group attacked the Niger embassy, where they were repelled by security forces. The Daily Observer could not confirm what ignited the troubles but at least two Libyans have been allegedly killed by Nigerians, whose government Monday announced it would repatriate several thousand Nigerians who were "endangering their own lives as well as those of other African immigrants" in Libya. Information emerging from the Gambian embassy in Libya says about one thousand Gambians are in Libya, 97 per cent of whom are workers and only three per cent are students, mainly under the aegis of the Islamic Call Society. In a related development, the African ambassadors and heads of missions and African groups in Tripoli convened a meeting at the African Centre to discuss the crisis. The group has planned to send a delegation to be led by the dean of African group, the ambassador of Uganda, to meet with the Libyan secretary of state for African Unity, Abdulsalam Treki, and the Libyan leader, Muammar Ghadaffi. Sources told Daily Observer that "at the end of the meeting, the African diplomats visited the place where the affected Nigerians, Ghanaian, Congolese were camped Sunday September 25 at 2am. They have since been transferred to another camp near Islamic society in Fallah. In that process two people were reported dead." When contacted yesterday to shed light on the Libyan crisis, an official at the department of Foreign Affairs, said, "According to the report we have here, everything is being done to make sure that our people are protected and that the situation is back to normal." Asked whether the Gambia government has plans to repatriate its nationals from Libya, the official said, "Well, we hope it will not come to that. I think diplomats are doing a very fine job and they are looking for the rapid solution to the problem." Further quizzed whether his department has statistics of the dead toll in the Libyan crisis, the official said, "Well, as far as our Gambian community is concerned, nobody has died yet, but we received reports of some sustaining injuries here and there, but not a significant number." _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------