More evacuees reach Cyprus, Turkey; operation peaks

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 have peaked.

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

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

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.

US officials said more than 12,000 Americans had now left Lebanon and the number of those wanting to leave had eased.

''The US embassy believes that most American citizens who wished to depart Lebanon with US government assistance have already departed,'' the embassy in Beirut said in a statement.

Britain's High Commissioner to Cyprus, Peter Millett, commenting on the British evacuation, said in a statement: ''The job is virtually completed.'' Some 1,600 evacuees, mostly American, arrived at Turkey's Mediterranean port of Mersin at 10:15 am (1245 IST) on the USS Trenton, an amphibious transport dock and one of the biggest ships involved in the evacuation.

The decks of the ship were packed with people smiling and waving, relieved to have completed their 14-hour voyage. Many were expected to be flown home from the US military base of Incirlik in southern Turkey.

Turkish help has brought much-needed relief to tiny Cyprus, whose limited resources have been sorely stretched by the huge influx of people at the height of its summer tourist season.

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.

''Leaving Beirut was much tougher because families including ours were being split and people were crying, people weren't sure if it was the right move to leave,'' Daudelin said.

Cyprus has appealed to its EU partners to provide more help.

European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, whose service coordinates humanitarian aid from the 25-nation European Union, will go to Cyprus tomorrow to assess evacuees' needs.

''He wants to have a first-hand view of the situation there and also to coordinate with the Cypriot authorities and listen to the views of the team of experts that we sent down there,'' a European Commission official said.

In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told President Vladimir Putin on Monday 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 in the day.

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 PKS RN1804