People from the United States and many European nations have been evacuated by sea and air from Tripoli and Benghazi, using the island of Malta as a staging point. The European Union said in Brussels that most of its 10,000 people in Libya had left, but that 650 were still asking to be evacuated, many of them from areas where rescue is difficult, The Associated Press reported. China said Monday that it had sent four military transport planes to rescue the remaining 1,000 of some 30,000 of its people who were there before the crisis.

Kristalina Georgieva, the European Union’s crisis response commissioner, said that 1.5 million additional foreigners remained in Libya, increasing pressure on the borders with Egypt and Tunisia as non-Libyans sought to flee.

In a statement on Sunday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, based in Geneva, said Tunisian authorities had estimated that 40,000 refugees had arrived from Libya in a week. And Egyptian authorities said 55,000 people had fled since Feb. 19. Over half the total number of refugees were Egyptians, the refugee agency said, but they also included Libyans, Chinese and people from several other Asian countries.

Television coverage at Libya’s land borders showed mainly poor contract workers carrying few possessions. Some footage showed hundreds of people crossing into Tunisia, then sitting on the ground, awaiting help.