More than 180 Britons evacuated from Lebanon

A Royal Navy warship set sail from Beirut with about 180 Britons fleeing Lebanon aboard.

HMS Gloucester, a Type 42 destroyer, headed to Cyprus after picking up the desperate Britons. With two larger vessels on their way, Downing Street signalled that the departures would accelerate in the coming days.

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In the Commons, Tony Blair told MPs that 5,000 of the estimated 22,000 British nationals and dual nationals in Lebanon could be out of the country by the end of the week.

"We are working as hard and as quickly as we can to ensure that we are able to evacuate all those who wish to leave," he said.

The aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious and the commando assault ship HMS Bulwark - both bigger than HMS Gloucester - are heading for Beirut for the next round of evacuations.

In Beirut, other western nations - including the United States, Canada, France and Italy - were evacuating hundreds of their citizens on warships, chartered ferries and helicopters.

The departures came as another barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire left one dead in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, while Israeli air raids continued across southern Lebanon.

More than 230 people have now died in Lebanon in seven days of fighting.

In the Commons, Mr Blair urged Israel to show a "proportionate" military response, but he also made clear that he held the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas responsible for the current crisis.

He said the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in Gaza and on the Lebanese border had been deliberately designed to provoke a backlash by the Israelis.

And he also hit out at Hezbollah's backers in Syria and Iran - directly linking Tehran's support of the militant group to roadside bomb attacks on British troops in Iraq.

"Hezbollah is supported by Iran and Syria, by the former in weapons, by the former in weapons, weapons incidentally very similar if not identical to those used against British troops in Basra; by the latter, in many different ways, and by both financially," he said.

Mr Blair, however, appealed to Syria to intervene with Hezbollah to end the violence.

"We urge Syria to take the action it could take in relation to Hezbollah if it wanted to do so," he said.

Mr Blair said it was now essential for the international community to take action to "stabilise" the situation in both Lebanon and Gaza.

However there was little sign from Israel that it was prepared to halt its campaign against Hezbollah.

In a written statement, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: "Israel will continue to combat Hezbollah and will continue to strike targets of the group."

Major General Udi Adam, head of the Israeli army's northern command, told Israel's Army Radio: "I think that we should assume that it will take a few more weeks."

The army's deputy chief of staff, Major General Moshe Kaplinski, also told Israel Radio that Israel has not ruled out deploying "massive ground forces into Lebanon".

Earlier, Mr Blair received renewed backing from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his plan to insert an international stabilisation force in southern Lebanon once the fighting had stopped.

Mr Annan said it would have to be "considerably" larger and better armed than the existing 2,000-strong UN force in the Lebanon.

"It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground," he said following talks with the European Commission in Brussels.

Among Britons waiting to leave Lebanon, there was frustration at the pace of the evacuation.

Camille Nehme, 34, from Cathcart, Glasgow, who was trapped in the port of Tyre with his wife and nine-month-old daughter, said he had tried to call the British Embassy in Beirut but the line had been constantly engaged.

"We haven't been told anything," he said. "Everybody wants to be somewhere else, but there is nowhere to go. We are staying here but really don't know what the future holds."

However the Captain of HMS Illustrious, Commodore Bob Cooling, said the six Royal Navy vessels now in the area could evacuate up to 10,000 people between them.

"Clearly we have not done it on anything like this scale before, but we know what's required and we have done a lot of training," he said.