Police in Cyprus reported yesterday morning that since Israel launched its offensive against Lebanon on July 13th, 35,023 foreign nationals had been evacuated from Beirut to Limassol and Larnaca by a flotilla of ferries, luxury liners and warships.
More than 23,000 have left the island while those who remain are being ferried home in an airlift of charter flights averaging 30 a day. Several thousand evacuees reached the island yesterday, maintaining pressure on their home countries to dispatch aircraft.
Foreign minister George Lillikas warned that an additional 60,000 to 70,000 could come through in the next few days, putting a strain on the island's resources at the height of the tourist season.
Although the US and Britain are reducing their operations, Canada, which has 50,000 nationals in Lebanon, and Australia, with 20,000, are gearing up for the 10-hour crossing. France has evacuated 4,400 people and has 9,000 applications pending. Only a trickle of the 80,000 Sri Lankans and 30,000 Filipinos have managed to leave.
Britons landing in Cyprus are put up in barracks at the British base at Akrotiri until homebound flights can be laid on, while US citizens are staying in two exhibition halls at the Cyprus international fairground in Nicosia to await charters carrying them to Baltimore and Washington.
The rare few with confirmed hotel and air bookings are much better off than the thousands who disembark and who are herded on to buses to wait long hours in temperatures of 38 degrees before they can be assigned beds in makeshift dormitories or seats on aircraft.
Sara Barclay, who arrived at dawn on Sunday on the USS Whidbey Island, an amphibious assault ship, said there was a great deal of confusion and waiting at the Beirut end.
"The entire port area is packed with people," she said.
Ms Barclay, from Philadelphia, said that she, along with other students and staff from the American University of Beirut, waited on campus from four until nine in the morning to go to the US embassy, where they were helicoptered at noon to the ship. They waited for another seven hours for the ship to set sail.
President Tassos Papadopoulos has urged the EU to assist Cyprus in handling the influx and to boost the number of flights to take the evacuees home.