Philippines says it will evacuate its 11,000 citizens from Lebanon if Israel launches ground op

The Philippines says it will evacuate 11,000 citizens from Lebanon the moment Israeli forces cross the border to launch a ground offensive against Hezbollah.

“A ground invasion will lead to mandatory repatriation,” Foreign Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega says at a press conference in Manila, adding that the plan is to move thousands out of the country via the sea. He did not provide other details.

Manila had earlier urged Filipinos to leave Lebanon before airlines stopped flying to Beirut, but most of its citizens did not heed the call, Filipino diplomats say.

Millions of Filipinos work overseas — with large numbers concentrated in the Middle East — due to limited job opportunities at home. Around 90 percent of those working in Lebanon are women migrant domestic workers.

“To some of them, getting killed in war is preferable to starving to death,” de Vega says, adding there have so far been no Filipino casualties from the Israeli air campaign against Hezbollah.

So far, only 500 Filipinos have taken up the government’s offer to leave Lebanon, De Vega says.

Anthony Mandap, consul-general at the Philippine embassy in Tel Aviv, says there are no plans as of now to repatriate some 30,000 Filipinos working in Israel.

Four Filipinos were murdered in Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and two were kidnapped — including a dual Israeli-Filipino citizen — and later released.