RAS ADJIR, Tunisia – An international effort to shelter and repatriate tens of thousands of migrant workers who fled Libya moved forward Friday, with the traumatized refugees able to rest at a Tunisian tent camp with toilets and showers before crowding onto planes or boats for home.

The camp near the border with Libya can house 20,000 people and its white tents equipped with blankets and mattresses filled up quickly Friday. More aid supplies were streaming in, including from the United States and Europe, and dozens of flights have taken off from a nearby airport in the past two days to take refugees home.

Chaos and uncertainty remain, however. The pace of evacuations can’t keep up with the thousands who have already reached Tunisia, and there are daily scenes of throngs of people fighting to get on buses for the airport.

There was a marked drop Friday in the number of those crossing into Tunisia, prompting speculation that forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi were intimidating those fleeing the country. Many people coming out of Libya reported that security forces took their cash and cell phones at checkpoints along the way.

However, Monji Slim, head of the Red Crescent in southern Tunisia, said he believed the reduced border traffic was because Friday is the Muslim day of rest and fewer Libyan border officials were on duty.

More than 200,000 people have fled to neighboring Tunisia, Egypt and Niger since Feb. 15, when the uprising against Gadhafi began, U.N. officials say. Of those, more than 100,000 have entered Tunisia.

After their harrowing ordeal in Libya, the fleeing workers’ first stop in Tunisia is a garbage-strewn makeshift camp just outside the Ras Adjir border crossing. From there, they make their way to the transit tent camp, about four miles away, and then get on buses to the airport in Djerba, a two-hour drive away.