With the Beirut airport shelled and the country's sea ports blockaded, the countries with nationals living in Lebanon were preparing ships, buses, or chartered planes for mass evacuations.

The United States flew dozens of citizens out of Lebanon on Monday and hired a commercial cruise ship which could hold about 750 passengers to help with the possible evacuation of thousands more.

The guided missile destroyer USS Gonzalez will escort the cruise ship on the Mediterranean to Cyprus, the Pentagon said.

"We are... operating on a scale of potentially thousands of people who want to leave," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Foreign ministers of the European Union (EU) met on Monday to discuss the Middle East crisis and the nationals' evacuation.

France, Italy, Belgium and Britain have sent planes and boats to help the voluntary evacuation of EU nationals.

On Monday, the French government sent a ship to evacuate the first batch of 1,250 people -- around 800 French nationals, about 400 citizens from other EU member states and up to 50 Americans --from Lebanon to Cyprus.

The British government dispatched two warships to the Middle East on Sunday to evacuate up to 10,000 British nationals from war-struck Lebanon.

Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells told BBC radio on Sunday that the navy ships would reach the Britons in Lebanon by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest, adding that Britain was moving as fast as possible to rescue its nationals.

The Foreign Office has urged citizens not to attempt to leave the country by themselves, citing the danger of the situation.

"We've seen these scenes [with] some countries trying to get people out by buses when they've been endangered by explosions on the sides of the roads... We don't want to do that to our citizens. We want to get those who we need to get out as safely and as quickly as possible," Howells said.

Besides the two navy ships, Britain had other boats on the Mediterranean which might be called on to carry evacuees to a reception center in Cyprus, Howells said.

Germany has made plans to evacuate 500 nationals from Lebanon, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Monday.

Most of the German citizens would be taken overland to Syria and then flown out of Damascus, Steinmeier was quoted by the German news agency DPA as saying.

Nordic states, namely, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden, also started the evacuation of their nationals.

The deteriorating security situation in Lebanon has led Denmark's Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deploy busses, ships and planes to evacuate some 2,300 citizens from the area.

Meanwhile, the first group of evacuated Norwegians who were brought from Lebanon to Syria by bus on Sunday, arrived in Oslo by plane on Monday.

Norway and France have cooperated in chartering the Norwegian car carrier "Hual Transporter," which has now been given permission to call at Beirut harbor and evacuate Norwegian and French citizens by sea to Cyprus.

The evacuation of Finnish nationals from Lebanon began early Monday. The Finns gathered in the center of Beirut to take buses, heading for Damascus as part of a German convoy. They planned to board flights from the Syrian capital either to Copenhagen or Oslo.

In addition, about 100 Finnish residents and 40 Finnish tourists in Lebanon left aboard a French ship on Sunday night.

On Monday morning, some 300 Swedes returned home from Lebanon after being evacuated by the Swedish authorities and thousands more are expected to follow, the foreign ministry said.

A ministry spokeswoman told Radio Sweden that 1,300 have so far made their way from Lebanon to Syria to be transported home.

The ministry has estimated that roughly 4,500 Swedes were in Lebanon when the current crisis flared up.

Air travel from Beirut was made impossible after the international airport was shut down Thursday when Israeli airstrikes gouged large craters in the runways.

Other countries, such as Algeria, Australia, Brazil, China, New Zealand, Russia and Thailand have also withdrawn their nationals from Lebanon.

Cyprus, an important safety corridor, has prepared itself for a major influx of foreigners fleeing Lebanon.

The Cypriot Foreign Ministry's Consular Affairs Division Director Omiros Mavrommatis said the government would facilitate the evacuation of foreign nationals expected to arrive in Cyprus from Lebanon on ships.

Israel has intensified its air raids on Lebanese targets since launching a massive assault on July 12 when Lebanon's Hezbollah guerillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in cross-border attacks.

Beirut and southern Lebanon in particular have suffered punishing raids by the Israeli air force.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora on Saturday demanded an immediate ceasefire, describing his country as a disaster zone after the attacks.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Monday to continue operations in Lebanon until Hezbollah returned the two captured Israeli soldiers, stopped rocket attacks on Israel and pulled back from its borders with Israel.