Erdogan attacks Israel for attack on UN chief

Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation's largest concentration of Arab-Americans, are calling on the United States to initiate an evacuation.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said: The US military is of course ready and has a range of plans.

WASHINGTON: U.S.-organized flights brought about 350 Americans and their close relatives to Lebanon this week, as fighting intensifies between Israel and Hezbollah, while thousands more still there face airstrikes and a reduction in commercial flights.
In Washington, senior State Department and White House officials met with two senior Arab American officials on Thursday to discuss U.S. efforts to help American citizens leave Lebanon. The two leaders also met separately with Department of Homeland Security officials.
Michigan State Rep. Alabas Farhat and Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, used the White House meeting to really drive home many important points about the issues facing members of our community are facing on the ground and many of the logistical problems they are experiencing during this evacuation, Ayoub said.
Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation's largest concentration of Arab-Americans, are calling on the United States to begin an evacuation. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that was not being considered at this time.
The American army is of course ready and has a whole series of projects. If we need to evacuate American citizens from Lebanon, we absolutely can, Singh told reporters.
Israel launched a deep strike air campaign in Lebanon and a ground incursion into the south of the country targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group. Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel on Tuesday, leaving the region bracing for any Israeli retaliation and fearing an all-out regional war.
Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost daily on the Lebanese border since the day after Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, attacked Israel on October 7, sparking the war in Gaza.
Other countries, from Greece to the United Kingdom, Japan and Colombia, have organized flights or sent military planes to transport their citizens.
As Israeli bombings targeting senior Hezbollah leaders shook the southern neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital last week, we could still see, hear and feel everything despite fleeing to the mountains outside Beirut, Nicolette said Hutcherson, a longtime humanitarian volunteer living in Lebanon with her husband and three children. .
The only seats the Hutcherson family could find on commercial carriers were for flights several weeks away and for thousands of dollars, she said. Eventually, Hutcherson and his young children joined the crowds heading to Lebanon's Mediterranean marinas, finding a place on pleasure boats converted into evacuation ships for the nine-hour journey to Cyprus.
Her husband managed to find a single seat on a plane a few days later to join them.
Another American family was mourning Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a resident of the Dearborn, Detroit metro area who was killed Tuesday in southern Lebanon. Family members said he stayed to help civilians too old, infirm or poor to flee.
He was on the phone with his daughter Tuesday when the impact of a strike knocked him down, his daughter, Nadine Kamel Jawad, said in a statement.
He just got up, found his phone and told me he needed to finish praying in case another blow hit him, she said.
The State Department has for nearly a year been asking Americans not to travel to Lebanon and for months advising them to leave the country on commercial flights. He also made clear that government-organized evacuations were rare, while offering emergency loans to facilitate travel out of Lebanon.
Some Americans said relatives who are U.S. citizens or green card holders have struggled for days or weeks to get seats on flights from Lebanon. Limits on withdrawing money from banks due to Lebanon's long-standing economic collapse and intermittent electricity and internet have made it difficult, they said.
Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a Washington-based lawyer, paid $5,000 for a relative to sit in the last seat on a flight departing from Beirut on Saturday.
She was on her way to the airport when the Israelis began one of their first days of intensified bombing, Abou-Chedid said.
On Thursday, some Americans said their loved ones had been able to get tickets for upcoming flights and were hopeful.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States will continue to arrange flights as long as the security situation in Lebanon is dire and there is demand.
Miller said Lebanon's national carrier, Middle East Airlines, also reserved about 1,400 seats on flights for Americans over the past week. Several hundred had taken them away, he said.
Miller could not speak to the cost of airline flights, over which the U.S. government has no regulatory oversight, but said the maximum fare that would be charged for a U.S.-arranged contracted flight would be $283 per person.
More than 6,000 U.S. citizens have contacted the U.S. Embassy in Beirut for information about leaving the country over the past week.
Not all have actually requested help to leave, and Miller said the department understands that some Americans, many of whom are dual U.S.-Lebanese citizens and longtime residents of the country, may choose to stay.
Miller said the embassy is prepared to offer temporary loans to Americans who choose to stay in Lebanon but want to move to a potentially safer part of the country. The embassy would also provide emergency loans to Americans who want to travel on U.S.-contracted flights.