The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) said it has received 124 requests from distressed Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) from Lebanon to return home due to the rising tension between Israel and Hezbollah militants.
DMW Officer-in-Charge Hans Leo J. Cacdac said that at least 60 OFWs and two infants will form the fourth batch of Filipinos returning to the Philippines from Israel on Monday.
In a press conference, Cacdac said that in Lebanon, 124 OFWs have requested repatriation, and the department will immediately act on their request to bring them back home as soon as possible.
The DMW estimated that there are 17,000 Filipinos in Lebanon, mostly in the construction sector and health care.
“Flight bookings and other means of transportation are already being prepared for Filipinos departing from Lebanon to arrive in the Philippines.It won’t take long before the first batch arrives from Lebanon,” the DMW official said.
He said, however, that there is no specific target date yet for when the first batch of repatriates will be flown back to the country.
“But we are looking at the possibility of this coming week na meron na maililikas from there and we are working on the rest in the coming weeks. So the soonest possible time sa Lebanon,” Cacdac said.
On the other hand, Cacdac said that those seeking assistance for repatriation composed 0f 32 hotel workers while the remaining 28 are caregivers.
“Upon this group’s arrival at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport’s Terminal 3 (NAIA-T3), this will bring to 119 the total number of OFWs returning to the Philippines since Palestinian militant group Hamas launched combined rocket, ground, sea, and air attacks in southern Israel on October 7,” he added..
Nearly 29,000 displaced in Lebanon amid skirmishes on Israel border: UN Beirut, Lebanon
Nearly 29,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon amid deadly exchanges between Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters and the Israeli army, a United Nations agency said Friday.
A total of 28,965 people have been displaced, mainly in the country’s south, the International Organization for Migration said in an update, adding that the figure had risen by 37 percent since October 23.
Some have found refuge with family members elsewhere in the country, while those who can afford it have been able to rent apartments on a short-term basis.
But with Lebanon in the grips of an economic crisis that has plunged most of the population into poverty, some are living in makeshift shelters in the south’s larger towns.
In Lebanon, at least 58 people have been killed in the cross-border exchanges of fire, most of them Hezbollah fighters but also including at least four civilians, one of them Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.
On October 7, Hamas gunmen poured from the Gaza Strip into Israel, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 229 more, according to Israeli officials.
In retaliatory Israeli air and artillery strikes, at least 7,326 people have been killed in Gaza, including more than 3,000 children, according to figures released by the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.
The death toll in Gaza is the highest there since Israel withdrew from the Palestinian territory in 2005. With AFP