BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Anxious Americans hauled bulging suitcases down a rocky Lebanese beach and into the waiting hold of a U.S. Navy landing craft Friday as the accelerating U.S. evacuation moved thousands away. As many as 5,000 U.S. citizens were slated to leave - the largest number in one day since the evacuation began Wednesday. U.S. Embassy officials said that more than 8,000 of the 25,000 Americans in Lebanon when the bombing started will have evacuated by Friday night.U.S. Marines helped push baby carriages and lifted children into the boats ferrying thousands of U.S. citizens, many who had been visiting family in Lebanon, to seven warships that waited in the Mediterranean. Dogs sniffed luggage for explosives. Troops handed out water bottles and military rations to evacuees, many of whom had been waiting in the sun since 5 a.m.
The USS Trenton, normally a troop transport, left Beirut carrying 1,775 Americans to the neighboring Mediterranean island of Cyprus, as did the USS Nashville, with 1,000 evacuees. Officials hoped a commercial vessel, the Saudi-owned Rahmah, would leave with another 1,400 Americans headed for Turkey.