Lebanon evacuation: Plea for Australians to leave now on last scheduled flight from Beirut

A final repatriation flight is set to depart from Lebanon as the foreign minister continues to plead for Australians to leave amid low take up of the flights.

The federal government has assisted thousands of Australians, permanent residents and their immediate families to leave Lebanon as the security situation deteriorates.

Israel has intensified its bombing campaign in southern Lebanon and the capital Beirut as it attacks listed terror group Hezbollah, which has been trading rocket fire across the Israel-Lebanon border for months.

“We have a flight scheduled for Sunday, that’s October 13, there are no further flights scheduled beyond that,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Friday.

“Flights are not going to be scheduled indefinitely and are subject to operational and security constraints. You should leave now if you wish to leave.”

The federal government has been dismayed at hundreds of empty seats on flights out of Lebanon despite thousands of Australians and their family members being registered as wanting to leave.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham has suggested Australians leaving Lebanon should be made to pay their own way on commercial flights given they have been warned to leave for months.

“We need to make sure that Australians understand when the Australian government ... issues travel warnings and says get out of somewhere, that they should heed those warnings, not wait for a possible free ticket home,” he said.

“Whilst the government is right to help people now to get out and to provide opportunities where they can, it’s not unreasonable that people should be paying the price of a commercial ticket, as long as they have the means to do so.”

Senator Wong says the approach to repatriation flights remains the same as it did when conflict in the Middle East broke out after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, when they were offered for free.