Hundreds of foreigners have packed the international departure terminal in Egypt's popular Red Sea resort city of Hurghada, trying to get flights out of the country.
Families with small children and retirees mainly from Europe stood in a packed crowd to try to change their tickets and flee Egypt, which has been in chaos since protesters took to the streets on January 25 demanding President Hosni Mubarak step down.
Streams of tour buses were lining up near the departure terminal at Hurghada on Thursday, delivering foreign tourists anxious to leave.
An elderly couple from Britain, George and Agnes, said they decided to return home "before things got out of hand."
"We're old and can't run very quickly if something happens," Agnes said with a nervous laugh. "If something happened, she'd outrun me anyway," her husband added.
"We've been trying to get to the registration desk for four hours already," Maria from Germany said, holding one infant in her arms and trying to keep control of two small boys as her husband inched the family's luggage through the crowd.
Maria said the family decided to cut their vacation short by a few days after Wednesday's unrest in Cairo worsened.
"We were told to try and leave as soon as possible because it's getting dangerous," she said without specifying who told her.
In two hours at the airport, not one international flight arrived, and only one domestic flight. Aircraft were leaving with tourists on average every ten minutes.
The resort city itself has been largely quiet, although a group of some 200 protestors marched down the center of the street on Wednesday evening holding portraits of Mubarak.
TV news stations in Egypt showed the Wednesday night clashes between the opposing protestors in Cairo, in which at least five people were killed and hundreds injured.
HURGHADA, February 3 (RIA Novosti, David Burghardt)
