BRASILIA, 22 July 2006 — Chile and Brazil yesterday stepped up efforts to bring home hundreds of their nationals who were seeking safe passage out of strife-torn Lebanon.
Some 400 of the 1,400 Brazilians who have asked to leave Lebanon were to be evacuated yesterday from Beirut to Adana, Turkey, via Damascus, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said.
Ministry official Everton Vieira Vargas said authorities were also examining the possibility of using buses to evacuate the 1,000 Brazilians stranded in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where security has become a “very serious” concern. Brazil has already evacuated 122 of its nationals from Lebanon this week. Seven Brazilians have been killed in the country since the start of the bombing offensive launched by Israel after two of its soldiers were kidnapped.
Brazilian air force planes were to fly the next contingent of evacuees home. There are an estimated 70,000 Brazilians in Lebanon, according to the Foreign Ministry.
Chile, meanwhile, was planning to send an air force plane to Syria on a similar mission to bring home its nationals, as well as citizens from other Latin American countries.
“The plane will bring back a large number of Chileans and will also help other countries, such as Argentina, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico,” which also have nationals stranded in the region, President Michelle Bachelet said Thursday.
