EU gears up for humanitarian crisis in Libya

(BRUSSELS) - The European Union geared up Wednesday for a potential humanitarian crisis in Libya, dispatching officials to the nation's borders with Egypt and Tunisia to assess the situation on the ground.

Several EU experts currently based in Algeria and the Jordanian capital Amman had been ordered to the borders with Libya "to do our own assessment of the situation and the needs", said Raphael Brigandi, a spokesman for humanitarian aid commissioner Kristalina Georgieva.

Some 5,000 Libyans and Tunisians had fled across the border into Tunisia, where assistance was on hand from the Libyan Red Crescent, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and medical teams deployed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, said Brigandi.

The EU also hoped to send an expert to Tripoli, he said.

"At the moment we are not facing a humanitarian crisis, which does not mean we are not concerned," he said. "The situation is evolving very rapidly. It's an unstable situation".

The EU to date had received no requests for aid from humanitarian workers on the ground "so no funding has been unblocked," he added.

The commission, the EU's executive arm, can unblock three million euros ($4.1 million) within 72 hours if needed, around 200 million euros if requested, and last year spent 1.1 billion euros in aid, a large chunk funnelled to Haiti and to Pakistan.

The EU had little information on what was happening inside Libya, he added, quoting the Red Crescent as saying 200 people had been killed and 1,000 injured in violence in the eastern town of Benghazi.

The 27-nation bloc is also planning for a massive influx of refugees from the southern shores of the Mediterranean, with Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini awaiting a "biblical" exodus of 200,000 to 300,000 people.

Home affairs ministers are to discuss how to cope with immigration at talks in Brussels on Thursday.