BEIRUT: Wiping away tears and hugging loved ones left behind, hundreds of foreigners were fleeing Lebanon on Monday, under the thumps of missiles as Israel intensified its military onslaught on the country.
While British and US citizens started to leave by helicopters, France chartered a ferry which can carry some 1,200 passengers, and other European, Asian and African nationals were being bussed overland to neighbouring Syria.
In six days of relentless air, sea and ground attacks, Israel has tightened its grip on the country by imposing a maritime blockade and gouging deep craters out of Beirut airport’s runways, shutting down the facility.
Israel launched the offensive to crush the Lebanese Shia guerrilla group Hezbollah, but the strikes have also targeted infrastructure and killed more than 170 people, almost all of them civilians and including foreigners.
Foreigners heading out of Lebanon were fearing for their safety as Israeli forces have targeted the roads to Syria, despite assurances on Monday from the Jewish state that it was liaising with Washington and the EU on the evacuation.
In a silence only broken by whining complaints, foreigners boarded busses at meeting points across the capital for a six-hour journey to the Syrian capital from where they will fly home.
For safety reasons, European embassies were coordinating joint convoys for their nationals, who are mostly of Lebanese descent and had spent the summer holidays to visit family back home.
“I feel we are cowards. We are leaving our dear Lebanese friends behind. But I have not been in a war zone before, and my family wants me to go back home,” said Belgian Sigrid Hoste, a teacher who had been studying Arabic in Lebanon.
“I am really angry at what Israel is doing. It is a disproportionate attack, and nothing justifies war. Beirut was a buzzing place just last week, today it is a ghost town.
“They have no right to do this,” she said.
“And now, we have to break off our stay in Lebanon, pay 50 dollars for the bus, something similar for the hotel in Syria, another 300 euros for the ticket to Belgium,” she complained. “But I will definitely come back.”
Fellow Belgian Elke de Backer, a translator at a bank in Brussels who also studies Lebanese Arabic, said: “We are very, very sad for Lebanon. It was such a great, fun and vibrant place last week.”
“It was such a great summer of mountain outings, beaches and concerts. We had tickets for this week to watch (Lebanese diva) Feyrouz in the (Roman) temples of Baalbek,” in eastern Lebanon, she said.
“Now, everything is cancelled.”
At the German embassy meeting point in the Hamra central commercial neighborhood, a veiled woman holding a baby in her arm sat on her luggage on the sidewalk, surrounded by seven other young women and children.
All of them were crying.
“These are my sisters and their daughters. We are terrified for our parents who are staying behind, but we have to leave because our children were terrified by the Israeli air raids last night,” said Dunia Ramadan, originally from Beirut.
“I do not know if my parents will be alive,” she said, sobbing quietly as she boarded the bus.
Watching them leave, two watchmen sat in front of a building, nodding their heads quietly.
“It is really scary. If great powers are evacuating their citizens, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may have warned them that he will wreck havoc in Lebanon,” one of them said.
Olmert may have a lot of enemies in Lebanon, but Garen Kochkerian had one more grudge against him.
He had been planning to get married in the next few weeks in Beirut with his German girlfriend, Kristina Schmidt, whom he was now bidding farewell as she was leaving with the German embassy convoy.
“It is a catastrophe for Lebanon, and for us. Now everything is changed. She has to leave,” said Kochkerian, a Lebanese Russian of Armenian origin, holding her hand tightly.
Behind the tinted windows of a large bus, a teary-eyed little girl posted a small note on which she scribbled the tradional Arabic farewell greeting: “Allah Makon,” or God be with you.
