Australia helps hundreds of its citizens leave Lebanon, thousands remain

By Lewis Jackson

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia has organised hundreds of airline seats for its citizens to leave Lebanon, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday, as she urged the many thousands of Australians that remain in Lebanon to leave the country while they still can.

Australia has secured 580 seats on flights departing on Thursday and Saturday for citizens, permanent residents and their families who want to leave Lebanon, Wong told a press conference. Flights were also organised earlier in the week.

Some 1,700 Australians and their families have registered their desire to leave Lebanon with the government, she said.

Australia is home to a large Lebanese diaspora and roughly 15,000 Australians normally live in Lebanon, according to the foreign ministry.

"Please take whatever option is available to you. Now is not the time for you to wait and see, now is the time to leave," Wong said.

Australia has been calling for its citizens and permanent residents to leave for weeks in part because the sheer number of Australians in Lebanon would make a government-sponsored evacuation difficult.

The two flights which depart for Cyprus on Saturday are dependent on Beirut airport remaining open, Wong said.

"We are very worried about the situation escalating. If Beirut airport closes the options for departing become even less," she said.

Australia has flown military aircraft to Cyprus as part of a contingency plan, but commercial flights remain the focus while Beirut airport remains open, said the foreign minister.

Wong also reiterated her support for the U.S.-backed ceasefire plan in Lebanon to end the "cycle of violence." Israel has rejected the plan.

(Reporting by Lewis Jackson; Editing by Michael Perry)