A Calgary woman anxiously awaiting the rescue of her husband, holed up in a Libyan city under siege, was relieved Tuesday to learn the federal government was making plans to evacuate Canadians from the strife-torn North African country.
But Sheila Muirhead still doesn't know when or how Michael will return to Canada, or whether he'll be safe till then.
"It's not like they're saying they're not going to try and do the best they possibly can, they're doing their best, it's just that everywhere they look it's not safe," Muirhead told The Canadian Press.
As the body count continued to climb in bloody clashes between protesters and security forces bent on crushing a popular uprising, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said federal officials were in contact with Canadian citizens and companies working in Libya.
"We're in close contact and obviously evaluating this situation carefully and putting in place evacuation plans should, or as those appear, to be necessary," Harper said from the Victoria area.
He didn't elaborate on those plans, but Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said in Ottawa that the government was attempting to obtain the necessary landing rights and expected an evacuation flight to be able to take place on Thursday, Feb. 24 from the Libyan capital of Tripoli.
Cannon said Canada was collaborating closely with other countries including the U.K., France, Australia and New Zealand in order to provide seats for citizens who are anxious to leave on evacuation flights.
Hundreds of people are reported dead as the protesters demand leader Moammar Gadhafi step down. But the defiant dictator has vowed to fight, urging his supporters on.
Michael Muirhead spent his 45th birthday hunkered down with co-workers at a company compound in Benghazi, a coastal town that is home to the country's oil and gas industry and the epicentre for the uprising.
"The problem for us, as a family, is that Michael and 15 other Canadians are in a compound in Benghazi and that's a thousand miles from Tripoli and there's no plans at this point to get them from Benghazi to Tripoli," said Muirhead, referring to the country's capital.
"They're being told to somehow make their way to Tripoli, but they're also being told at the compound that if they leave they're going to be robbed, so they should stay put."
Muirhead said her husband told her that when the protests began to escalate, supervisors told them the problem would wash over.
A few days later they told workers they would be having a meeting, and then supervisors and all the locals evacuated the compound and left her husband and the others there.
From the compound they can hear shooting, Sheila Muirhead said, and thugs have ransacked some of the buildings. Protesters came through the offices with weapons, she was told, robbing some of the workers, although some of the locals are now protecting the area.
Muirhead did not want to name the Libyan company her husband works for over concerns for his safety.
Libya is one of the world's biggest oil producers, and many oil companies were also evacuating their expat workers and their families.
A spokesman for the U.S.-based Shell Oil said company employees, including Canadians, have been moved from the capital.
"The safety and security of all our staff remains our primary concern," said company spokesman Theodore Rolfvondenbaumen. "Shell offices remain closed."
Other countries have already started evacuation operations, packing the airports and border areas in Libya with frightened people.
"I think Canada should have probably started earlier, like the other countries," said a 24-year-old Libyan-Canadian living in Montreal, who asked to remain anonymous for the safety of his family.
He said his relatives are also hiding in their homes, staying away from windows.
"There's mercenaries at some points, they just shoot at anything that moves," he said.
Monitoring the violence using social media, he said he now understands the terror the regime has instilled on the people.
"(Gadhafi) is crazy, he might burn the oil fields. If he has chemical or biological weapons he might use them. My mom told me he was crazy, but I didn't believe how crazy he was until I saw videos."
At least two airlines, British Airways and Emirates, the Middle East's largest carrier, said they were cancelling flights to Tripoli as reports spread that bodies of protesters littered the streets.
Britain said it was redeploying a warship, the HMS Cumberland, off the Libyan coast in readiness for a possible sea-borne evacuation of British citizens still in the country. France, Turkey and several other nations have already started the evacuation of their citizens.
Witnesses reported scenes of bloody mayhem in Tripoli and Benghazi, describing shootouts and bodies lying in the streets.
In a speech broadcast on state television, Gadhafi shouted and pounded his fists as he told backers to impose control over the capital and take back other cities.
After a week of upheaval, protesters backed by defecting army units have claimed control over almost the entire eastern half of Libya's 1,600-kilometre Mediterranean coast.
Several foreign-based Libyan officials have resigned over the violent suppression of protests, including the country's envoys to the United Nations. The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting about the crisis.
Harper, who was making an announcement at a Canadian Forces base near Victoria, strongly condemned Gadhafi's actions, saying it was outrageous for a government to condone firing weapons upon its own citizens.
There are 331 Canadians registered with the Canadian Embassy in Tripoli, and Cannon said 91 of them have so far made it known they would like to leave the country.
