As war rages in the middle east, more than a million people have been forced to flee their homes in Lebanon. Australian citizens desperate to escape have begun arriving home. The first evacuees landed in Sydney last night and were greeted with tears of relief as families were reunited.
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00:00An emotional embrace between a father and a daughter, something Bilal Nasser feared
00:08he'd never be able to do again.
00:10A lot of buildings, like a building with 32 units full of people, they are falling down.
00:15I mean, imagine, you see that, it's really very bad and I was very infected to see and
00:21hear what's going on.
00:23That uncertainty, to a rush of relief, is being felt across the country, with hundreds
00:30of Australians returning home from the first repatriation flights out of Lebanon.
00:35It was the scariest ride that one can have, because you never know when the bomb will
00:41fall on your head.
00:43Travelling for work, Mr Nasser became trapped just south of Beirut.
00:47He filmed this video before he left, unaware it was the Israeli airstrike which killed
00:52Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
00:55I was about 500 metres away from that bomb and there's 80 tonnes of rockets hit that
01:03place on one time.
01:06The federal government eventually organised his evacuation.
01:10The day I evacuated, they hit the area where I was living as well.
01:15More than 4,000 Australians and their families have now registered to leave Lebanon, but
01:20with the region becoming more unstable by the day, the government warns that future
01:25flights home can't be guaranteed.
01:28While there's still hope for the thousands of residents who remain there, the same can't
01:32be said for those they leave behind.
01:35I feel very sad for them, you know, all my friends and all my people in Lebanon as well,
01:40all the people in Lebanon, and that's why I request our government to do something to
01:47stop, to cease fire in the Middle East.
01:51A plea being echoed across Australia's Lebanese community.