Deadline passes, UK wraps up Lebanon evacuation

Akrotiri Raf Base (Cyprus), Jul 23: Britain wrapped up the evacuation of its citizens from Lebanon today after whisking about 4,000 to Cyprus, as a deadline for those wishing to flee by boat expired.

Exhausted people rested on army folding beds at a reception centre on a British military base on the island after the last British warship to leave Lebanon spirited them away from the violence just before Saturday night's deadline.

''Thank God we left just before they started bombing our area. It broke the windows. I don't know whether the house is still there,'' said Dee Faiad, who was living in southern Lebanon with her husband and is now travelling to London.

Israel has killed more than 350 people in Lebanon, the vast majority civilians, in attacks aimed at stamping out Hizbollah rocket fire. At least 37 Israelis have been killed.

The clash has displaced half a million people in Lebanon, including at least 25,000 who have fled to Cyprus, an island in the east Mediterranean some 75 km (45 miles) away.

Lieutenant Colonel John Brown, in charge of facilities for the evacuees, said Britons requesting evacuation had dwindled, possibly taking an Israeli warning that people in southern Lebanon should flee north to the Litani river as a signal that parts of the country were safe.

But the deadline for evacuees to gather in Beirut or miss ships taking them to safety -- after which only British helicopters will pick them up -- caused consternation among those resting at the Royal Air Force base.

''It can't really be a deadline,'' said Fouad Hijazi, 63, a retired merchant and British passport holder. ''I left my entire family there.'' Struggling to process its thousands of evacuees, the United States has been forced to host many at a makeshift camp on fairgrounds in Nicosia before sending them home. Arrivals outnumber the seats on chartered flights out of Cyprus and overworked airports mean days of delay.

By contrast, with its sovereign air base, a large expatriate community and fewer evacuees, the British have managed to put citizens on planes just six hours after their arrival by ship.

Brown said his team would shut down the holding area when the last 300 British evacuees leave by plane tday evening.

In an airport departure lounge at the airbase, evacuees quickly grabbed shoes, clean clothes, food and other essentials before heading out. Nearby in a hangar equipped with 1,000 army beds, others prepared to tuck in to a traditional English breakfast.

Volunteers comforted those who had narrowly escaped death, had their houses destroyed, or left family behind.

''One man came through without shoes. We gave another man a toothbrush and he just burst into tears,'' said Olivia Draper, a volunteer from Kent, southeast England.

REUTERS

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