Egypt’s Aviation Ministry is waiting for an assessment from the Foreign Ministry of the number of Egyptians residing in Libya to begin evacuating them, the Aviation Minister said on Monday. Aviation Minister Hossam Kamel told Aswat Masriya that Egyptians in Libya will cross into Tunisia using buses before they get flown back home. He said there is a difficulty in evacuating them using Libyan airports, citing the “deteriorating security situation” there. Twenty-one Coptic Egyptians were abducted in the Libyan city of Sirte on two separate occasions in December and January, only one week apart. They were beheaded in a video released late Sunday titled “a message signed with blood to the nation of the cross.” Egypt has launched airstrikes in Libya on Monday in response to the beheadings. The Egyptian military said in a statement the strikes targeted training sites and weapons and ammunition storage sites belonging to Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, located inside Libya. The Aviation Ministry created an emergency airlift with Tunisia last July to transport Egyptians stranded on the Libyan borders with Tunisia back home. Abu Bakr al-Gendy, the director of the Central…
