David Lammy is scrutinising contingency plans for evacuating remaining Britons from Lebanon, having already urged UK nationals to leave the country amid hostilities with Israel.
The foreign secretary will lead meetings in Whitehall on Friday as officials try to avoid a repeat of the chaos in which British people scrambled to leave Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in 2021.
Lammy expressed concern about “rising tensions and civilian casualties” in Lebanon after Israel carried out airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in the south of the country on Thursday.
He repeated the Foreign Office’s warning to British nationals, urging them to leave Lebanon “while commercial options remain” as the situation “could deteriorate rapidly”.
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed to retaliate after the attacks that targeted Lebanese militants with exploding pagers, killing and injuring many people.
On Thursday evening, Lammy said he had spoken to the Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, and “expressed my deep concern over rising tensions and civilian casualties in Lebanon”.
He said that they had discussed “the need for a negotiated solution to restore stability and security” across the border between Israel and Lebanon.
Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of strikes across southern Lebanon late on Thursday, hours after Nasrallah threatened “tough retribution and just punishment” for the wave of attacks that targeted the organisation with explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies.
The Israeli military said it had hit hundreds of rocket launchers which it said were about to be used “in the immediate future”.
The bombardment included more than 52 strikes across southern Lebanon, the Lebanese state news agency NNA said. Three Lebanese security sources told the Reuters news agency that they were the heaviest aerial strikes since the conflict began in October.
The hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah followed Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran.
The Foreign Office continues to advise against all travel to Lebanon.