US readies plans for mass evacuations if Gaza war escalates

The Biden administration is creating contingency plans to evacuate hundreds of thousands of American citizens from the Middle East if the war in Israel spirals into a larger-scale conflict, according to a report in The Washington Post.

Report informs, citing The Jerusalem Post, that American officials, speaking anonymously, told the paper that Americans living in Israel and Lebanon are of particular concern, amid regular exchanges of fire along the countries' border and concerns of a multi-front war.

About 600,000 American citizens live in Israel, and the US has been working to ensure safe passage out of the country since the war with Hamas broke out on October 7.

There were believed to be about 86,000 American citizens in Lebanon at the start of the war.

The officials who spoke to the Post stressed that an evacuation of that scale is considered a worst-case scenario, with other, more limited operations seen as more likely, but that it "would be irresponsible not to have a plan for everything." Such an evacuation could be "more difficult than any previous operations in recent memory," the Post reported, potentially involving Air Force aircraft or Navy warships.