* Day labour that migrants rely on has dried up
* Airspace closure halted refugee evacuations
* Concern that more could attempt boat crossings
(Adds migrants disembarking in Tripoli, updates sourcing in
paragraph 16)
By Aidan Lewis
CAIRO, May 8 (Reuters) - After several failed crossings from
Libya to Italy and a long spell in detention, Nigerian migrant
Olu had pinned his hopes on being evacuated from the besieged
city of Tripoli with his family.
Instead, with refugee resettlement disrupted and air space
closed against the new coronavirus, he found himself stranded in
the Libyan capital as the war intensified, unable to work
because of restrictions linked to the pandemic.
So far, there are no reports of the virus spreading among
migrants in Libya. But there are fears it could have a
devastating impact if it takes hold.
Libya has an estimated 654,000 migrants – more than 48,000
of them registered asylum seekers or refugees - many of them
living in cramped conditions with little access to healthcare.
Restrictions on movement are driving them further into
hardship.
"For the past two months I have not been able to work," said
Olu, 38, who has been living in a single room in Tripoli with
his wife and five children since his release from a migrant
detention centre in February.
He has cobbled together enough money for rent and food with
transfers from friends and a cash handout from the U.N. refugee
agency UNHCR. But casual labour is still hard to find after a
24-hour curfew was relaxed late last month, and he is worried
those funds will run out.
"If I lose this apartment I'd be out on the street and I'd
be exposed to this deadly virus," he said by phone from Tripoli.
"So it's very scary now." He declined to give his family name
for security reasons.
African and Middle Eastern migrants have long come to Libya
seeking jobs in the country's oil-powered economy.
As the country slid into conflict after a NATO-backed
uprising in 2011, smugglers put hundreds of thousands of them in
boats and sent them off across the Mediterranean towards Italy.
But in the past three years, crossings dropped sharply due
to EU and Italian-backed efforts to disrupt smuggling networks
and to increase interceptions by Libya's coastguard, a move
condemned by human rights groups.
ROCKETS
Those intercepted by the coast guard are detained in centres
nominally under control of the government, or left to fend for
themselves.
Migrant detention centres have been repeatedly hit in the
fighting. Late on Thursday a volley of rockets landed on the
Tripoli seafront, near a naval base where returned migrants
disembark. About 25 migrants had to return to a coast guard vessel to
avoid the shelling, before being disembarked and taken to a
detention centre that is not under government control, the
International Organization for Migration said.
One Eritrean migrant in detention in Zawiya, west of
Tripoli, said he was sleeping in a hangar with about 230 people,
including some suspected to have tuberculosis. Those who could
not afford to bribe guards were kept in a separate, permanently
locked hangar, he said.
"We don't have enough food. We have 24 TB patients. We don't
have any precautions against coronavirus," he said in a text
message.
Aid agencies that struggle to operate in a country dominated
by armed groups are finding it harder to trace returned migrants
after they disembark.
"It seems like there are fewer people in detention," said
Tom Garofalo, Libya country director for the International
Rescue Committee. "But the question is where are they going, and
we don't know the answer to that, so that's very distressing."
UNHCR had been evacuating or resettling some of the most
vulnerable refugees until airspace was shut in early April.
The agency, which had to close a transit centre in Tripoli
in January due to interference by armed groups, is now handing
out cash, food and hygiene kits. But payments are hampered by a
long-running liquidity crisis at Libya's banks, said UNHCR's
Libya mission head, Jean-Paul Cavalieri.
He worries that with the loss of livelihoods due to
coronavirus, more will attempt sea crossings.
"People are getting desperate," he said. "We are concerned
that some of them will ... put their lives at risk on the sea."
(Editing by Andrew Heavens and Mike Collett-White)