France urges nationals to leave Lebanon as fear of war looms

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France has joined the list of countries urging its citizens living in Lebanon to leave the country as fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East grow.

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked its citizens to arrange travel urgently due to “a highly volatile” security situation.

Paris is following in the footsteps of the US and the UK, whose foreign ministries both called on their nationals to leave on Saturday.

The UK urged its nationals in Lebanon to “leave now” on available flights, and warned that that “the situation could deteriorate rapidly”.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy posted on X that the UK had withdrawn the families of officials working in the British embassy in Beirut.

Sweden also recommended that its nationals evacuate, after announcing the closure of its embassy in Beirut.

Several airline companies have halted flights to and from Lebanon, including Air France and the German airline Lufthansa.

Concerns about an escalation in regional tensions have increased following the assassination of top Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur in Beirut on Tuesday evening, which Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has vowed a forceful response to.

The strike, on Beirut’s crowded urban neighbourhood of Haret Hreik, wounded 74 civilians.

Talal Hatoum, a local official with the Shiite Amal Movement, Hezbollah’s key political ally in Lebanon, said Tuesday’s attack marked a shift in the rules of engagement in the conflict due to the number of civilian casualties.

The last time Israel targeted Beirut was in January, when an airstrike killed a top Hamas official, Saleh Arouri. That strike was the first time Israel had hit Beirut since the 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.

Many of them had not expected that Israel would hit Beirut, which has raised fears that it might elicit a strike by Hezbollah on a major population centre in Israel.