Like France, many Western countries are preparing to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon

Faced with the escalation of threats and violence between Israel and Hezbollah, despite calls for restraint from all sides, France, the United States and even China are organizing.

A flood of fire and the fear of a “total war“. Intense Israeli strikes against Hezbollah left 492 dead on Monday in Lebanon, including 35 children, according to the authorities of this country, which experienced its deadliest day in nearly a year of exchanges of fire between the two sides on the sidelines of the war in Gaza.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “very seriously worried“of the number of civilian victims in the south and east of Lebanon, pounded by the Israeli army, indicated its spokesman on Monday, at a time when the international community fears that this escalation between Israel and the powerful Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran, will drag the region into an uncontrollable spiral.”We are on the brink of total war“, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, was alarmed.

Faced with what is feared as Israel’s third war in Lebanon, many countries, particularly Western ones, are preparing for the possibility of a ground attack by Israeli forces and are considering massive evacuations of their nationals in Lebanon. China warned its own nationals on Monday, September 23, to evacuate both the “Land of the Cedars” and Israel as quickly as possible, by their own means.

The Americans, for their part, are preparing a massive evacuation operation, by sea, of the approximately 89,000 American citizens based in Lebanon. To this end, the US Navy has dispatched its “Wasp” amphibious group to the Eastern Mediterranean. This involves four ships, including an amphibious assault helicopter carrier, capable of accommodating several thousand people on board. Already this weekend, the American and Israeli defense ministers have finalized the operational articulation that such a mass evacuation would require.

France is also preparing. Diplomatic sources indicate that an amphibious helicopter carrier, accompanied by two frigates, could quickly head for the Lebanese coast to extract French nationals and their relatives from the country, if the decision is made. That is between 30,000 and 60,000 people. These evacuees would then be transported to Cyprus, less than 200 kilometers from the port of Beirut, to be in fine repatriated to France by air.

During Israel’s second Lebanon war in 2006, the French and American navies managed to evacuate 14,000 and 15,000 of their respective nationals respectively.