Oct. 7 (UPI) — About 900 Americans, legal permanent residents and their family members have been evacuated from Lebanon on U.S.-organized flights, State Department officials said Monday.
The State Department has been urging Americans to flee Lebanon amid Israel’s intensified attacks on Hezbollah in the country, chartering planes and reserving seats on flights out of the Middle Eastern country to aid their departure.
Including a flight that left Beirut on Thursday with 150 people on board, a total of eight U.S.-organized flights have transported roughly 900 American citizens, legal permanent residents and their family members from Lebanon to either Istanbul or Frankfurt, Germany, though State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in a Thursday press conference that most of the flights went to Turkey.
The Biden administration has also reserved seats for those eligible on Middle East Airlines, he said, adding that hundreds have left the country that way.
It was unclear how many Americans, legal permanent residents and their family members had evacuated with the use of Middle East Airlines, but last week he said they had blocked off more than 1,400.
On Thursday, he said: “We have now blocked 868 total seats on commercial flights” and though they do not know exactly how many have been filled they believe “a significant portion” has been.
He said the U.S.-organized flights cost $283 per person, while the blocked seats on Middle East Airlines at less than $400 per seat.
Only half of seats arranged on the eight U.S.-organized flights have been filled, despite some 8,500 people inside Lebanon, many dual citizens having contacted the U.S. embassy in Beirut for more information.
Miller explained that contacting the embassy does not mean that all leave of those people will leave or leave right now. He said the reason why seats are left unfilled “is because you do have people who are making what are very tough decisions to leave.”
“You have people, in many cases, who have lived in Lebanon for a long time, who have family members — not just immediate family members but extended family members — who they don’t want to leave,” he said. “And so they decide, ‘I’m not going to leave today, maybe I’ll leave tomorrow, maybe I won’t leave at all.’ And it’s up to them, of course to make those decisions.”
Asked if the State Department continues to see demand for help in fleeing the country despite the planes being half filled, Miller responded, they do.
“We do believe there is still demand and so we plan to continue organizing these flights,” he said.
The first U.S.-organized flight was Wednesday.
The State Department has also said it is making loans available to help those in the country who do not want to leave Lebanon move to a safer location.
Israel and Iran have long been engaged in a proxy way that exploded into the open exactly a year ago with Hamas‘ brutal surprise attack on Israel.
Israel amid the war has been trading strikes across its northern border with Hezbollah, another Iran-proxy militia, but the fighting intensified starting Sept. 23, raising concerns for Americans in the country. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Lebanon since.
Numerous other nations have scrambled to get their citizens out of Lebanon amid the intensification of fighting, including Canada, Germany and Australia.