Australians Escape Fighting in South

In the 48 hour “halt to aerial attacks” (which has been in reality no more than a reduction in the intensity of bombing) announced by Israel there has been a flood of people rushing north to escape the fighting in the south. Among them was a convoy of 24 Australian citizens and 16 other foreign nationals including Americans and Germans that arrived Tuesday evening in Beirut from the southern city of Tyre. Where they will be going from here is as yet unclear as a passage out of the country has not yet been arranged for them. Embassy officials declined to say when they would leave, how, or to where, saying only that at this stage "all options are being considered". For now they are staying in the relative safety of the plaza hotel in West Beirut.

Here they joined a handful of other Australian citizens who had made their own way to Beirut in the previous days and been instructed by the embassy to stay at the hotel as well. All are now here awaiting further information about where they will next be headed. While some are having their accommodation and travel costs payed for, some will be expected to foot the bill themselves. "We’re doing things on a case by case basis" one official said.

One woman, who chose to remain anonymous, spoke of being stuck with her husband and their four children in the border town of Rmeich for the whole three weeks of fighting, hearing bombing every night, and often during the day as well, once more than 50 bombs within earshot in the space of a few hours. She handed me her digital camera and showed me the pictures of he bombing they had taken from their house, explosions clearly visible only a stones throw out their window. Only once had the bombings killed any body in the town. A Hezbollah fighter had, in a remarkably cowardly attack, fired a rocket from the street then run into a house no more than a hundred metres away. Israeli aircraft had spotted him and struck the house immediately in retaliation. According to the rumours circulating in his town he had survived but his brother’s two daughters had been killed.

Early Tuesday morning she and her children had been notified by mobile phone that they were to be picked up by a UN bus which was moving those stranded in the village to the port city of Tyre. Here they met the Australian convoy and headed north to Beirut. While the woman had been living in Lebanon, where her husband ran a dairy farm for roughly fourteen years, her two eldest children were born in Australia and the whole family was eligible for evacuation. She had planned to come back to Australia some day soon, “but not like this. Not without money or a place to go.” When asked what she thought of the Embassies evacuation program she replied, “Well they were a bit slow, but we’re here and we’re safe now.”

Sam, an 18 year old man now staying in the hotel waiting for evacuation back to Australia had made his own way to Beirut the day before from the costal town of Adlou, between Tyre and Sidon. He had come to Lebanon to visit family after completing year twelve at Condell Park in Sydney’s west, and hopes now to return and do a TAFE course in electronics. Five days ago he had received a call from his worried parents in Australia who had encouraged him to leave and he had headed to Sidon, staying there five days before organising a ride to Beirut. Three rockets had destroyed bridges in Adlou only “two or three hundred metres” from his house. He had been in the street at the time and had run inside in such a fright that he kept on running strait into a wall.

More than four thousand Australians have been evacuated from Lebanon in the three weeks since the conflict began and more than three thousand of them have already returned to Australia. The flow of evacuees has now slowed to a trickle, mostly those who, like those who arrived today, had been stuck in the south unable to move for fear of getting caught up in the fighting.