Several countries have chartered flights, while others issued warnings and offered assistance.
With Israeli airstrikes extending into Beirut, the Lebanese capital, foreign governments have been scrambling to secure safe passage out of Lebanon for their citizens, urging people to leave while the city’s international airport remains open.
Some governments have bought up seats on commercial flights, while others have chartered whole planes.
The State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said the United States had chartered a flight from Beirut to Istanbul on Tuesday for Americans wanting to leave the country.
“We hope to organize additional flights if there is demand,” he added at the time. The United States has also identified 800 seats for Americans on commercial flights out of Beirut over the past several days, though not all those seats have been filled.
The British government said on Thursday that it would be chartering several flights to evacuate its citizens and their dependents from Lebanon. The first, ferrying more than 150 people, landed a day earlier, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on social media.
Also on Thursday, an Airbus A330 chartered by the Spanish government arrived in Beirut to evacuate about 380 citizens in the country, the Spanish news agency EFE reported. More chartered flights will arrive in the coming days, it said.
A day earlier, Germany evacuated 130 “particularly vulnerable” citizens from Lebanon, its foreign ministry said. That flight also delivered five tons of humanitarian aid for civilians in Lebanon, according to the ministry.
Several other foreign ministries, including those of Italy and the Netherlands, have issued warnings and offered assistance to their citizens as the violence has intensified. Canada’s foreign ministry said it had secured 1,000 seats for Canadian citizens on several commercial flights leaving Lebanon.
“If you are a Canadian citizen in Lebanon, you must leave now,” Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in a statement on Monday. “If you are offered a seat, take it now.”
By Wednesday, 200 Canadians had left Lebanon, according to the ministry.
Many foreign nationals working in Lebanon have found themselves stranded, huddling alongside Lebanese who have fled their homes. Lebanon, which has a population of roughly 5.3 million, hosts an estimated 177,000 migrant workers, many of whom are domestic workers from Asia and Africa, according to the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency.
Megan Specia and Michael Crowley contributed reporting.
Lynsey Chutel is a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. More about Lynsey Chutel
