More than 1,110 Americans have fled Lebanon so far as the battles between Israel and Hezbollah continue to intensify, officials said.
The US is organizing thousands of seats to be made available for American citizens to depart the country, with 50 people boarding the latest flight to Istanbul Wednesday morning, US State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
“We’ve had some flights go out with around 150 people, and we’ve had these other flights with fewer, but it is going to be an ongoing question we look at, an ongoing assessment that we make,” Miller said of the trips being scheduled for Americans.
Miller said the flights will carry on as needed as hundreds of other foreign nationals are also choosing to evacuate Lebanon to escape the bloody conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hundreds of thousands have already fled southern Lebanon, where Israel’s bombardments are most intense and where the IDF is conducting ground operations to destroy Hezbollah’s weapons cache.
Among those fleeing the area are thousands of Syrian refugees returning to the very homeland they fled during the bloody civil war in 2011, according to Lebanese officials.
When pressed about the mounting escalation in Lebanon, Miller said the US continues to back Israel’s targeted strikes on Hezbollah’s terror infrastructure while urging for de-escalation.
“We cannot and must not see the situation in Lebanon turn into anything like the situation in Gaza,” Miller added, referencing Israel’s ongoing operations across the Palestinian enclave.
The Israeli military, however, said it has no plans to scale back its current attacks in Lebanon, with the IDF touting Wednesday that it has conducted more than 1,100 airstrikes across the border in recent weeks.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Israel will continue its harsh wave of attacks against Lebanon so as to “not allow [Hezbollah] any respite or recovery,” the Times of Israel reported.
“Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all, surprising,” Halevi said. “They will not understand what happened and how it happened.”
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has fired at least 90 missiles over the border on Wednesday, with the rockets either intercepted or crashing and burning in northern Israeli fields, according to the IDF.
With Post wires
