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International Affairs

If I may, I shall make a little progress first. Sixty-three of the most vulnerable British nationals were evacuated on Monday 17 July and a further 175 people were evacuated by HMS Gloucester on Tuesday. Yesterday, a further 863 people left on HMS York and HMS Gloucester, but today we hope to evacuate even larger numbers. HMS Bulwark, which was expected to dock in Beirut this morning, can take up to 2,000 people, and we have other ships standing by. Our teams in Cyprus have arranged for those who wish to continue back to the United Kingdom to fly home, and where necessary we have chartered special aircraft to do that. We are co-ordinating closely across government to support those who arrive back in the United Kingdom. We are also aware that approximately 100 British nationals and British dual nationals are still in south Lebanon. We are in touch with some of them and are trying to contact others, but at the moment it is too dangerous to travel south to try to get them out. A United Nations ferry has been allowed into Tyre and has picked up many foreign nationals; we are urgently seeking to confirm how many of them are British nationals. Ten British nationals left Sidon yesterday in a bus convoy and should be evacuated to Cyprus today. We are working with our EU partners to get all EU nationals who want to leave out of south Lebanon as quickly and safely as possible.