The head of the United Nations refugee agency said on Thursday that it was proving a "logistical nightmare" to help tens of thousands of migrant workers fleeing Libya in a desperate crush on the Tunisian border.
The United Nations refugee agency says almost 100,000 people have fled Libya's fighting to neighboring Tunisia and Egypt in what it called a humanitarian emergency.
As nations evacuate their citizens from the violence gripping Libya, many African migrant workers are targeted because they are suspected of being mercenaries hired by Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.
A dozen young men left this village of olive groves and whitewashed houses near the Mediterranean coast last week, bound for the Italian island of Lampedusa aboard an overcrowded fishing boat. They were part of a flotilla of would-be migrants that has created a humanitarian crisis and stirred a political furor in Italy.
