ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey evacuated 3,000 citizens on two ships today from the chaos of Libya’s uprising but thousands of other foreigners were still stranded at Tripoli airport, struggling to get a flight home.

Several countries — Russia, Germany and Ukraine among them — sent more planes to help their citizens escape the turmoil engulfing the North African nation and the United States said Americans would be evacuated by ferry later today to the Mediterranean island of Malta.

“The airport was mobbed, you wouldn’t believe the number of people,” said Kathleen Burnett, of Baltimore, Ohio, as she stepped off an Austrian Airlines flight from Tripoli to Vienna on Tuesday. “It was total chaos.”

The Turkish commercial ships, which left from the eastern Libyan port of Benghazi, are being escorted by a navy frigate, the first of which is expected to reach Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Marmaris around midnight. Turkey has also sent two more commercial ships to Libya.

Turkey has about 25,000 citizens and more than 200 companies involved in construction projects in Libya worth more than $15 billion. Some of the construction sites have come under attack by protesters. Turkey has now evacuated more than 5,000 citizens from Libya over three days, about 2,000 of them by plane, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

“We are carrying out the largest evacuation operation in our history,” he said.