WASHINGTON – Worried about possible attacks on its ships, the U.S. Navy was publicly vague about details as it stepped up its efforts to evacuate Americans from Israeli-Hezbollah fighting.
Nearly a week into the violence, the evacuation has been criticized as slow and chaotic. Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, the top U.S. Naval officer in the Mideast, said nine Navy ships – including the amphibious assault ships USS Whidbey Island, USS Iwo Jima and USS Nashville – were en route to the area and officials had arranged for a second commercial ship to dock in Beirut.
A cruise ship, the Orient Queen sailed into Beirut late Tuesday to begin shuttling thousands of Americans to safety.
Walsh said the ship would begin boarding evacuees, as many as 1,000, at dawn, but there was no sign shortly after sunrise that the operation had begun.
Asked at a Pentagon press conference Tuesday about the possibility of Hezbollah attacks on the operation, Walsh said: “I’m concerned about attacks on ships – you bet.”
He said that was one of the reasons the details he revealed were “the best I can give you conceptually, but they’re not going to reveal a lot of specific detail.”
Walsh said there were no plans yet to put U.S. Marines ashore in Beirut for security.
In addition to the nine U.S. ships on their way, a number of coalition ships were en route and included vessels from the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy.
Some of the U.S. ships will take passengers to Cyprus while others will provide escorts and protection for the commercial vessels ferrying the Americans out of Lebanon, Walsh said.
“You will see amphibious ships with American citizens on board,” he said.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said earlier that the U.S. was considering contracting with as many as four more commercial ships that could each carry between 200 and more than 1,000 passengers.
At least 8,000 of the estimated 25,000 Americans in Lebanon want to leave.
Earlier in the day, 320 Americans, mostly children, students and the elderly, left by military helicopter and a European ship.
After criticism from Congress, the State Department dropped plans to ask Americans to pay for their rides on commercial vessels.
“A nation that can provide more than $300 billion for a war in Iraq can provide the money to get its people out of Lebanon,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice late Tuesday informed Senate leadership the administration does not intend to charge U.S. citizens to be evacuated from Lebanon, Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., announced.
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