Following the development of the situation in Lebanon in recent days, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has increased its crisis preparedness.
This is reported by the ministry to Ritzau on Sunday evening.
– The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is following developments closely and is in dialogue with partners and other countries about the situation. Based on the developments of recent days, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has increased crisis preparedness, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs states in a written reply.
At the same time, the ministry emphasizes that no evacuation from Lebanon has been initiated. It only happens in “very special cases”, it says.
The ministry does not elaborate on what it concretely means that crisis preparedness has been increased. It has not been possible to get an answer to that on Sunday evening.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ standing crisis response consists of on-call teams who are on duty around the clock to attend the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In July 2023, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a press release that the emergency preparedness consisted of four duty teams, each with 12 people, who were in turn ready to come in at two hours’ notice.
The move came after Danish authorities succeeded in evacuating around 1,100 people from Afghanistan when the Taliban regime took power in the country in August 2021.
On Sunday, around 415 people were registered on the Danish list for Lebanon, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On Wednesday, 360 people were registered.
The Danskerlisten is a list that Danish citizens and persons with a residence permit in Denmark can subscribe to when they travel or live abroad.
It is voluntary whether you want to register for the list. Therefore, the list cannot be taken as an expression of how many Danes are in the country.
It is the assessment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that there are still opportunities to travel out of Lebanon, but that the opportunities have become “significantly fewer”.
– Therefore, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also clearly recommends that you book now and travel at the earliest opportunity – even if this is not with a direct flight connection, it says.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises against all travel to Lebanon due to a “significant security risk”. The call also states that all Danes staying in Lebanon leave the country.
In the past week, attacks across the Israeli-Lebanese border have intensified.
Over a thousand people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Lebanon in the past two weeks, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, according to Reuters. It is not clear how many of those killed were civilians.
According to Lebanon’s government, the attacks have also forced a million people to leave their homes.
/ritzau/
Source: www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk
