More evacuees reach Cyprus, Turkey; operation eases

LARNACA, Cyprus, July 24 (Reuters) Thousands more people fleeing Israel's aerial bombardment of Lebanon flooded into Cyprus and Turkey today amid signs the mass evacuation may finally be levelling off.

Cypriot police spokesman Demetris Demetriou told Reuters the total number of evacuees arriving in the holiday island had reached 35,000 by today morning. Of those, 23,000 had already travelled home.

''Most of the evacuees are Americans, Canadians, Britons, French and Australians,'' he said.

US officials said more than 12,000 Americans had now left Lebanon. As the flow of Americans turned to a trickle, they said other foreign nationals, including Britons and Canadians, were boarding a US chartered cruise ship in Beirut.

''It's slowing down ... So we've opened up to other nationalities now,'' said one official on condition of anonymity, adding some Britons and Canadians had boarded.

A French embassy spokesman said the number of French citizens waiting to flee had dropped off and a German official said there were just a few hundred Germans left to evacuate.

Britain's High Commissioner to Cyprus, Peter Millett, commenting on the British evacuation, said in a statement: ''The job is virtually completed.'' Overnight, around 15 ships brought more exhausted evacuees to the ports of Larnaca and Limassol in one of the busiest nights since Israel's air strikes on Lebanon began 13 days ago.

Turkey has opened its Mediterranean port of Mersin to evacuees, relieving some of the strain on tiny Cyprus, whose limited facilities have been sorely strained by the crisis.

Some 1,600 relieved evacuees, mostly Americans, waved from the decks of the USS Trenton, one of the biggest ships involved in the evacuation, as it docked in Mersin today.

Many were expected to be flown home from the US military base of Incirlik in southern Turkey.

HORROR Evacuees described the horror of life under bombardment.

''When they bombed the airport we heard it as though it was next door and we saw the clouds come up. We have two babies, so it was impossible to stay there,'' said Canadian Robert Daudelin from Montreal after arriving at Mersin.

Alia Ismail from Michigan, strolling on a Larnaca beach with her three young daughters, said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should have come to the region earlier to help halt the conflict.

Rice held talks in Beirut today.

''She is a little... no, she is a lot late. Already a lot of destruction has happened. We don't feel anyone is protecting us.

(The bombing) is affecting everybody, even people who have nothing to do with this are paying the price,'' said Ismail.

Cyprus has appealed to its European Union partners to provide more help, especially planes to fly evacuees home.

''The situation is still difficult because the arrivals are more than the departures,'' Cypriot Communications Minister Haris Thrassou told Reuters.

European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, whose service coordinates EU humanitarian aid, will go to Cyprus on Tuesday to assess evacuees' needs, the Commission said.

France said it had evacuated 4,450 French nationals and 1,150 foreigners as of midday today.

In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia had evacuated about 1,900 people from Lebanon. But he said ''maybe hundreds'' of Russians and other ex-Soviet citizens could still be trapped in south Lebanon.

Three Indian naval vessels brought around 800 Indians, Nepalis and Sri Lankans to safety in Cyprus early today.

Australia said it expected to take 6,000 or more of its 20,000 citizens out of Lebanon this week, in what its ambassador to Turkey described as ''the biggest Australian evacuation since the Second World War''.

REUTERS MQA ND2242