SYDNEY - The last few Australians to escape war-torn Lebanon have touched down at Sydney airport into the anxious arms of waiting family and friends.
Less than a dozen people, arrived, leaving behind almost 3,000 Australians travelling in Lebanon and 25,000 members of the Australian Lebanese community, now trapped after Israeli airstrikes shut down the capital's airport and closed national borders.
Speaking outside Sydney airport, Joseph Hadachiti said he was lucky to have absconded from the hell-hole that was his birthplace although his face, exhausted from three days on the run, tells a different story.
Mr Hadachiti and his wife crossed the Syrian border into freedom two hours before it was heavily bombed.
"(Beirut) was very bad, there was bombing everywhere - for two, three days - they bomb the bridge, the airport," he said.
"I was very worried ... it is beautiful (to be here)."
Mr Hadachiti's daughter Adleen said her father was driven to the border by her brother-in-law, and from there joined thousands of other people desperate to catch a cab to Damascus and flee the Middle East.
"There was a lot of tension ... there were a lot of people trying to flee, a lot of people even left their cars. That's how desperate they were," she said.
But her family's delight has been tainted.
Adleen's sister Zeena and her two young daughters remain trapped in Beirut.
Now forced to communicate by mobile phone after jets bombed landlines, Adleen said she last heard from her sister two days ago in a text which read: "It is 4.20am and I haven't slept yet because of the sound of the Israeli airplanes and bombing. God bless."
Calling on the Australian government to help her sister and thousands of others like her, Adleen said not enough was being done.
"She can't leave by land and she can't leave by sea. What are we supposed to do?
"America has already got a strategy to release thousands of people, but what is the Australian government doing?"
Rosemary Haddad spent more than a day sitting by the phone trying to call the Australian embassy in Lebanon.
Now in Australia with her husband and three children, all under 13, she said she was abandoned in her time of need.
"I think it's disgusting," she said.
"We are Australians and we were in a foreign country. We had no idea what to do or where to go ... the only people that helped us were the local travel agents."
Escaping across the Syrian border was "like Armageddon", she said.
"There were cars everywhere, everyone was trying to get out and once we got to the airport we had to wait 16 hours before we could get on a plane," she said.
Mrs Haddad's 13-year-old son Elie, overseas to watch the World Cup in Europe before visiting family in Lebanon, said he was just glad to be home.
"As soon as we heard about it (the bombing) we just ran ... we went to the border and the next minute we heard it had been blown up," he said.
"We were heaps stressed."
Feeds