Officials are evacuating Irish citizens from Libya this evening after an Air Corps aircraft was forced to leave Tripoli last night without any passengers.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said this evening that the 26 Irish people remaining in Tripoli are being evacuated by air.
Depending on weather conditions, the 12 Irish people in Benghazi are due to be evacuated by sea tonight.
The six Irish people elsewhere in Libya are making their way, when safe to do so, to departure points including Tripoli, Benghazi, and the border with Egypt.
The aircraft that arrived in Tripoli airport late yesterday afternoon to evacuate Irish citizens had to leave last night for Malta with no passengers on board after encountering visa difficulties.
The Irish plane, a Casa aircraft which can accommodate 21 passengers, landed at 5pm.
The evacuation is being co-ordinated by Pat Hennessy, the Irish Ambassador in Rome, who is accredited to Libya.
A small number of Irish passengers arrived at Gatwick Airport in London on charter flights today.
The Department has advised against all travel to Libya and warned Irish citizens who are already in the country to leave.
Anyone who has any concerns over family or friends in Libya can contact its Crisis Centre on 01 4180222.
Tens of thousands of foreign nationals are fleeing the country as the situation worsens. A US State Department spokesman said unfavorable weather conditions are posing problems for people trying to leave the north African country by air.
In a rambling phonecall to state television today, Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy, who has lost control of large parts of the country following violent clashes, challenged fellow Libyans to quell the protests bringing chaos to the country. He linked the protesters, whom he dubbed “our children”, with al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, forces loyal to Col Gadafy today mounted a counter-attack as rebels threatened the Libyan leader's grip on power by seizing important towns close to the capital.
The opposition already control major centres in the east, including the regional capital Benghazi, and reports that the towns of Misrata and Zuara in the west had also fallen brought the tide of rebellion ever closer to the embattled leader's power base.
Forces loyal to Col Gadafy have attacked anti-government militias controlling Misrata and killed several people in fighting near the city's airport. Violence also reached the town of Az-Zawiyah, just 50km west of the capital Tripoli. Zawiyah, on the Mediterranean coast, is on the main highway between the Tunisian border and the Libyan capital and is also the site of an oil terminal.
Al Jazeera television broadcast pictures today of what it said was a burning police station there.
The brief, grainy pictures of Az-Zawiyah were followed by footage of around 20 bodies, most with their hands tied behind their backs. Al Jazeera said the men had been shot for refusing to shoot protesters.
The uprising has virtually wiped out Libya's oil exports, said the head of Italy's ENI, Libya's biggest foreign oil operator. The unrest has driven world oil prices up to around $120 a barrel, stoking concern about the economic recovery.
Anti-government militias are in control of Zuara, about 120km west of Tripoli, fleeing Egyptian construction workers who crossed into Tunisia said. There was no sign of police or military and the town was controlled by "popular committees" armed with automatic weapons.
"The people are in control. Police stations have been burned and we didn't see any police or army in the past few days," Egyptian labourer Ahmed Osman said after leaving the town and crossing the border into Tunisia.
World leaders condemned Col Gadafy’s bloody crackdown on the week-long revolt that has split Libya, but did little to halt the bloodshed from the latest upheaval reshaping the Arab world.
US president Barack Obama made his first public comments, condemning as "outrageous" and "unacceptable" attacks on protesters that have killed up to 2,000 in 10 days.
French defence minister Alain Juppe said he hoped Col Gadafy was "living his last moments as leader". British foreign secretary William Hague urged the world to increase pressure the Libyan leader, whose grip on power appeared to be slipping.
As in other parts of the Arab world, protesters in Libya appear to be driven mainly by frustration with political oppression and economic hardship, and are largely secular.
Yet al-Qaeda's North African wing threw its weight behind their cause, urging protesters to "continue their struggle and revolution and to escalate it to oust the criminal tyrant", according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
Additional reporting: Agencies