A US military C-130 transport plane landed 82 passengers at Cairo Airport shortly after 3:00pm local time, US Embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton told AFP.

Two more planes were expected to land later in the afternoon and a fourth was preparing to leave Djerba Airport in Tunisia, part of an international effort to deliver home refugees from unrest in Libya.

The same operation repatriated 312 Egyptians overnight.

European countries and the United States began Thursday airlifting more than 40,000 Egyptians who fled Libya for Tunisia, hoping to avoid chaos and epidemics spreading at makeshift camps on the Tunisian-Libyan border.