US draws up plan for mass evacuations from the Middle East: Report

The Biden administration is drawing up contingency plans to evacuate hundreds-of-thousands of US citizens from the Middle East, in case the Israel-Palestine war escalates into a regional conflict. 

The main focus of their concern is Israel and Lebanon, both home to sizeable numbers of dual US citizens.

The administration estimates about 600,000 US citizens were in Israel and another 86,000 in Lebanon when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, according to the Washington Post.

But the officials are also looking into how to evacuate US citizens from other Middle Eastern countries amid mass protests against Israel and the US across the region.

The officials told the Washington Post that such a wide-scale evacuation was a worst-case scenario but it would be "irresponsible not to have a plan.”