Citizens from around the world continue to flee Lebanon after a dramatic escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah.
Evangelo Sipsas is at Beirut International airport to witness the exodus as he too tries to book a ticket to leave Lebanon.
Evangelo Sipsas is at Beirut International airport to witness the exodus as he too tries to book a ticket to leave Lebanon.
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NewsTranscript
00:00We are here at the International Airport in Beirut. Overnight there has been some
00:07strikes and during the morning today and that's why there has been a number of
00:12booths that have been set up from different countries that are evacuating their
00:17citizens. It's really big, there's a number of booths. There's
00:21Australia over there, here we have the Netherlands, we have Belgium, Spain and
00:27all the way on the other side at the end of the building are a Brazilian booth
00:33that documents people from Brazil or dual citizenships that are heading
00:37there. The situation looks like this pretty much. It is quite crowded, there's
00:42a lot of people that are fleeing. You can see it's quite busy, it was even busier
00:48before and we're expecting more traffic to come, more people to come because
00:54more planes are going to be arriving in the next short period of time so a lot
00:59of people will be leaving. This has been going on for the past over a week now, a
01:04number of people leaving. There were the Canadians earlier, Chinese nationals that
01:08have been evacuated but also American citizens, French, the UK, a number of
01:15people, Greeks, Cypriots. So it is taking place constantly and as you can
01:19see here every corner of the airport looks like this. There's a number of
01:23little booths with their flags, with the representatives from the embassy or from
01:28the forces of the country that are documenting people that are going in and
01:32going out. This is what the scene looks like right now at the International
01:38Airport in Beirut. People leaving, flights are fully booked. I tried to get a flight
01:43myself and I had to wait until the end of this week because everything was
01:48fully booked. I was lucky because someone cancelled so you can understand how the
01:51situation is a little bit chaotic. People are trying to leave, people want to leave.
01:56It is a little bit of a mess but things are flowing pretty steady and decent
02:02here at the International Airport in Beirut.