Kerala today urged the Centre to immediately arrange a special flight for passage of the Indian nurses who had left strife-torn Libya to neighbouring Tunisia to come back home.

In a letter to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said 58 nurses had already left for Tunisia from Libya by road.

Another 48 nurses had expressed their willingness to leave Libya. In the prevailing circumstances it would take at least 10 days for them to catch normal flights from Tunisia to get back home, the CM wrote.

Considering this, the Centre should arrange a special flight to take them home from Tunisia free of cost, Chandy said.

Most of these nurses hailing Kottayam and adjoining areas were working in Tripoli and Benghazi.

For the last several days, they had been living in hardship and the situation was further complicated as visa period of many of them were about to expire and they did not receive salaries for the last couple of months.

The parents of the nurses had held a meeting at Kottayam last month and urged the state and the Centre to take steps for their evacuation.