As the United States winds down the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Lebanon, U.S. Navy shops and contracted commercial vessels are set to bring U.S. humanitarian aid into the country, the Pentagon said on Monday. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the ships would deliver supplies including medicine and blankets to non-governmental relief organizations in Lebanon. Whitman did not say which groups would receive these supplies, when delivery would begin or the quantity of supplies planned. But he said some humanitarian supplies due to go to Lebanon were expected to be delivered to Cyprus on Monday. “We're going to be shifting our emphasis here from assisting in the departures to assisting in providing humanitarian relief,” Whitman said. The Pentagon sent nine Navy ships to be part of the evacuation efforts and last week rejected criticism that it was slow to get the evacuation under way. As of Monday morning, the U.S. sea and air evacuation effort had brought 11,913 U.S. citizens out of Lebanon, with another 1,200 expected to be evacuated aboard the commercial passenger ship Orient Queen on Monday, Whitman told reporters. The State Department put the overall figure for those evacuated by the United States since July 16 at about 13,600, including about 1,000 leaving on Monday. The State Department said there were about 25,000 Americans in Lebanon at the start of the hostilities, and defense officials had said they were expecting to evacuate 5,000 to 8,000.
