WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon has ordered five military ships and thousands of Marines and sailors to help transport U.S. citizens out of Lebanon, a move that could sharply speed up the evacuation as fighting continues.
The U.S. Navy said on Tuesday the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit were ordered to head to the area to help evacuate thousands of Americans.
The group includes the three ships in the Iwo Jima group — the helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima, amphibious transport dock USS Nashville and the dock landing ship USS Whidbey Island, together carrying 2,200 Marines and sailors.
Two other ships were also ordered to join the Iwo Jima — the amphibious transport dock USS Trenton and a High Speed Vessel Swift, a catamaran with an aluminum hull.
Helicopters from the Marine expeditionary force have evacuated 68 Americans over the past two days. Those flights continued on Tuesday, the Navy said.
DAY 7, Time magazine, The ancient city of Tyre, sitting on a promontory built by Alexander the Great, is famed worldwide for its wealth of archeological treasures. Yet in the past week, Tyre, one-time home of the entrepreneurial Phoenician seafaring race, has become a casualty of the dark side of history, a place of fear, destruction and death caught up in the age-old hatreds of the Middle East. 
DUBAI, 18 July (IRIN) – Aid from the wealthy countries of the Gulf has poured into Lebanon, where intense Israeli attacks have smashed infrastructure and killed hundreds of civilians over the course of the last week. 
DAY 6, By Joel Greenberg, Tribune foreign correspondent, Israeli warplanes continued their onslaught on the Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut, reducing apartment buildings to rubble and knocking out power in wide areas. The army said it warned residents of seven villages near the border with Israel to vacate their homes before a heavy assault. Hezbollah militants fired volleys of rockets at Israel’s third-largest city Sunday, killing eight people and wounding more than 20 in the worst single attack in Israel in five days of widening conflict with the Lebanese guerrilla group. Waves of Israeli air strikes across Lebanon killed at least 28 people. 
BBC, 17 July 2006, Lebanon’s stock market has closed along with much of the rest of the country’s economy as Israel’s air and sea blockade continues. The government said that damage from Israeli military strikes has already cost its economy about $500m (
AMMAN, Jordan (UPI) — Like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Arab response to the Lebanese-Israeli disproportionate military encounter further demonstrates the widening chasm between the Arabs and their regimes.The joint press conference by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mousa and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Mohammad Shaali in Cairo following a meeting of Arab foreign ministers Saturday was testimony to this deep gap.
Day 5, Beirut/Tel Aviv – Israel’s offensive against Lebanon and the Hezbollah guerrilla group threatened to escalate dramatically Sunday when a missile barrage slammed into the port city of Haifa and the Israeli military ordered all Lebanese civilians to leave southern Lebanon. Over 100 Lebanese have been killed, and around 280 wounded, in the approximately 220 attacks, most aerial, that Israel has launched since the offensive began on Wednesday. 
bbc news, An Israeli air raid has killed at least 17 Lebanese civilians who were fleeing southern border areas. Women and children were among those killed when the convoy was hit. "Bodies litter the road," an eyewitness said. 
By Alistair Lyon, BEIRUT (Reuters) – Israeli air strikes killed at least 27 civilians on Saturday, pounding Lebanon for a fourth straight day to punish it for letting Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hizbollah fighters threaten northern Israel. President Bush said Syria should persuade Hizbollah to stop cross-border attacks from Lebanon’s mainly Shi’ite Muslim south. 
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