The phone call Alexandra Vega received from her boyfriend in Cairo was urgent: "It's action time. Get me home. There's gunfire in the neighborhood."

The desperate call from Maged Ragab, a 32-year-old audio engineer from Orlando, came hours before the U.S. State Department urged Americans on Sunday to leave Egypt "as soon as they can safely do so." The American Embassy announced that it was organizing chartered flights to evacuate its citizens to "to safe-haven locations" in Europe, starting Monday.

Ragab is now among American citizens, including 380 U.S. Embassy officials and their families, trying to flee the country as unrest over the rule of President Hosni Mubarak has escalated into looting and violence. An estimated 90,000 Americans live and work in Egypt.

Ragab, who also works as a hip-hop emcee, had taken a job in December 2010 to help set up a recording studio in Egypt. He had been in Egypt about a month before the protests and demonstrations against the autocratic Mubarak began.