The first group of 43 Chinese evacuated from riot-torn Libya arrived in Beijing Thursday morning on a flight from Egypt's northern city of Alexandria.
The 43 Chinese workers arrived in Beijing Capital Airport at 10:23 a.m. local time. They took flight EY888 of Etihad Airways, national airline of the United Arab Emirates, which departed from Alexandria on Wednesday.
Another group of 40 took another commercial flight at around 5:30 p.m. (1530 GMT) Wednesday and are due to arrive in Shanghai at around 2 p.m. local time Thursday.
All of the evacuated are workers with China Building Technique Group Co. Ltd.(CBTGC). They had been working in a university construction site in Tobruk, 500 km away from Libya's second largest city of Benghazi, the Chinese embassy in Egypt said.
CBTGC Vice President Wang Jingfeng told Xinhua that currently the company has around 100 Chinese employees in Libya. Besides the 83 workers flown out of the region, nine workers evacuated from Libya remain in Egypt.
The riots in Libya have caused great property loss to CBTGC, with equipment, houses and cars damaged or wrecked at the company's site in Libya.
The 43 workers belong to China Changshu Construction Group co., LTD. On Thursday afternoon they will fly to Shanghai, two hours' drive from Changshu, a city in east China's Jiangsu Province, Wang said.