Foreigners Flee Lebanon Amid Calls For "Humanitarian Corridor"

A spokesman for Germany's foreign ministry said Wednesday that officials hoped to evacuate all German nationals willing to leave Lebanon by the end of the day.

"This morning, 3,000 Germans who want to leave gathered in Beirut," Martin Jäger told reporters in Berlin, adding that many of them held both Lebanese and German passports.

The German embassy in the Lebanese capital has organized more than 50 buses to take most of the Germans to the Syrian capital Damascus, from where they will be flown to Germany on charter flights. Others will travel to Cyprus on board a French ferry evacuating Europeans who are fleeing the violence in Lebanon. On Wednesday, a cruise liner carrying more than 1,000 US citizens also left Beirut for Cyprus. At least 25,000 Americans are currently in Lebanon.

The German government has organized three charter flights from Damascus, while the army was preparing to fly to Adana in southern Turkey to fetch other Germans wishing to come home. Jäger said that 700 Germans had already fled the country since last Wednesday when Israel launched a deadly bombing campaign on its northern neighbor in a bid to flush out Hezbollah militants. While 320 people arrived in Düsseldorf on Tuesday, another 188 Germans landed in Munich on Wednesday as 100 people made their way home via a stop-over in Hungary.

He added that the German government was "very concerned about the humanitarian situation in Lebanon" and had on Wednesday made available a million euros in emergency relief to Beirut.

There were chaotic scenes at Beirut's waterfront on Wednesday as swamped embassy staff struggled to prioritize the crowds turning up at staging posts near the port as Israeli missiles and shells exploded just a couple of kilometres (barely a mile) away, sending loud booms echoing across the smoke-shrouded skyline.

Chirac calls for "humanitarian corridor"

French President Jacques Chirac meanwhile demanded the creation of "humanitarian corridors" in Lebanon that would allow refugees to travel safely within the country as well as on their way to Cyprus.

Officials for the United Nation's Children's Fund (Unicef) and the World Health Organization (WHO) also called for such a corridor to transport the injured and deliver aid packages. They said that the destruction of Lebanese infrastructure by Israeli air raids had made it more difficult to bring aid to those in need.

Germans call on Annan to report on situation

German leaders on Wednesday were also trying to defuse the situation and called on Israel to exercise restraint. Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said that while Israel's right to defend itself was justified, Jerusalem had to watch the proportionality of its actions and spare civilians and infrastructure.

Wilhelm added that the German government agreed that radical forces had to be stopped from toppling the region into chaos. The kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, which prompted Israel's military action, had to be ended before Israel would stop its raids.

He also said that the German government called on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to present a report on the situation to allow the UN Security Council to take action on a possible UN peacekeeping mission.

The United Nations is mulling a mandate for a new international force in Lebanon that would be considerably bigger than the 2,000-strong one currently deployed there, following a proposal from the leaders of the G8 group.

Fischer: New UN force will not work

But former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who won the confidence of both Israelis and Palestinians during his time in office, said on Wednesday that it would make "little sense" to deploy a bigger UN force in Lebanon to stabilize the country.

"Only a robust force with a robust mandate could perhaps achieve something positive," he told the weekly paper Die Zeit, due out on Thursday. "I think it is far more important to put political pressure on the radicals and to commit ourselves to new peace negotiations."

Fischer described Israel's eight-day-old offensive as a war.

"Beirut is under siege, Haifa also," he said. "On both sides people are dying in military violence. This is war."

He added that the violence had been "orchestrated by foreign leaders of Hamas as part of their struggle with the moderate elements in the movement."

But Iran and Syria also had a hand in the events, he added.

Fischer did not respond to a suggestion made by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, French-German Green Party representative in the European Parliament, that he be called on to mediate in the crisis.