THE U.S. EMBASSY has set up a Media Centre in Larnaca to deal with the large influx of foreign journalists interested in the US situation, suggesting that the US may soon launch a full-scale evacuation effort of US citizens from Lebanon.
The State Department recently estimated that over the next few days, 15 per cent of the 25,000 Americans living in Lebanon would leave the country.
There is speculation that security concerns have so far prevented the US from evacuating its citizens in large numbers – as France did yesterday when it brought 970 passengers, mostly French, from Beirut on the chartered cruise-ship Ierapetra.
But Americans left stranded in Lebanon to face Israeli bombardment are growing increasingly irate at the slow US response, which to some bears striking similarity to the sluggish and inept response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.
“I’m freaked out that our government is treating us this way,” said one Rutgers student studying at the American University of Beirut. “Are we a Third World country or what?”
The US Media Centre in Cyprus has not yet been willing or able to issue a clear and unambiguous statement declaring when and what type of vessel it is sending to Beirut for evacuation of US nationals, again perhaps due to security concerns.
“We don’t have anything official at this point,” said a Press Centre representative.
But the Los Angeles Times has reported that a Pentagon-contracted cruise ship, the 750-capacity Orient Queen, was set to arrive in Lebanon yesterday to ferry evacuees to Cyprus.
There have also been rumours that a destroyer or other type of military watercraft would escort any such cruise ships.
The US military evacuated about 60 Americans by helicopter Sunday and Monday.
Among the US-based news agencies that have sent correspondents to Cyprus in anticipation of a major US evacuation effort is television news giant CNN.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, who hosts the weekday news programme ‘Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees’, broadcasted live from the Larnaca port Monday night in front of an Italian destroyer that had arrived from Beirut.
Cooper’s crew had just flown in to Larnaca from Tel Aviv, after spending the morning chasing after Hizbollah missile explosions in Haifa.
They were planning to return to Beirut yesterday on Ierapetra, which was set to depart again for Beirut at 8pm yesterday.
Since they would still be on the boat when their daily live programme was to air, they planned and hoped to be able to broadcast directly from the boat.
Swedish diplomats in Cyprus told Reuters that a 1,600-capacity vessel was sailing from the Crete to Beirut to pick up Swedes, Greeks and Europeans. The vessel was expected to berth in Beirut at around 4pm yesterday and return to Cyprus early this morning.
“I was far away from the bombing, but it was too much,” said Sana, a 22-year-old German woman from Cologne who refused to give her last name. She was forced to leave her Lebanese husband behind.
“He didn’t want to leave. If it wasn’t for the baby, I wouldn’t have left either,” she told Reuters.
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