Egyptian workers flee Libya amid tales of chaos

Egyptian workers flee Libya amid tales of chaos :: WRAL.com: "This trash-strewn, windy desert plateau that marks the frontier with Libya was a tangle of small vans, station wagons and tour buses Tuesday — all ferrying home thousands of Egyptian workers who told of mercenaries, airstrikes and chaos in Moammar Gadhafi's violence-wracked country.

'Gadhafi is crazy. It's a massacre over there,' said Ashraf Mohammed, who worked as carpenter in Tobruk, not far from the border. 'They were shooting at civilians and children. We heard there were airstrikes in other cities and I have friends who can't leave!'

Some of those fleeing said government officials had vanished in Tobruk and other towns in the east. Egyptian guards at the frontier added that Libyan soldiers appeared to have melted away from their border posts, with security taken over by tribesmen.

Mohammed was bent double under the weight of suitcases and bulky blankets as he walked back through the border checkpoints toward the waiting buses, where the names of Egyptian cities were being called out.

Full vans topped with improbable piles of luggage lurched away from the border and down the winding road into the town of Salloum."