Family dive for cover as shrapnel strikes

Andrew Greig, his wife Bronwyn Wood, children Josia, 6, and Oliver, 4, and Beulah Wood.

A New Zealand schoolteacher had to yell to her children to lie flat on the floor as a blast in a nearby building shot shrapnel through their apartment window in the southern Lebanon city of Tyre.

Beulah Wood, of Mt Albert, said her daughter Bronwyn Wood was living in Tyre with her husband, Andrew Greig and their two sons, aged 6 and 4.

Mrs Wood said she was in regular contact with the family through emails and occasionally by phone and was increasingly concerned for their safety as the fighting continued between Israel and Hizbollah militia.

The family, from Wellington, were dangerously close to the action and on Sunday shrapnel smashed through their apartment window.

Mrs Wood said the family had been taking refuge in their garage for seven hours before going up to their apartment when the next building but one was hit by a missile.

"It [shrapnel] broke the window of the boys' bedroom ... she had to tell the boys to lie flat ... that was really terrifying."

Mrs Wood said Mr Greig, a squadron leader in the New Zealand Air Force, was working in Lebanon for about a month as a United Nations observer with others from Australia and Scandinavia.

He had recently ended a six-month assignment in Israel and was to spend the next six months in Lebanon.

Mr Greig would stay put, but they were trying to get Bronwyn and the children evacuated.

However, that was difficult, as Tyre was about 85km south of Beirut where foreign ships were taking on evacuees.

Israeli had bombed the bridges along that road and Tyre's port was thought too small for the warships.

Tyre, the fourth-largest city in Lebanon, is just 19km north of the Israel border and has suffered multiple airstrikes in the past eight days.

The ancient Phoenician port is famous for its Roman ruins, including the Great Hippodrome, once a venue for chariot racing.

Mrs Wood said the shelling by Israel might have damaged the famous structure only 300m from her daughter's apartment.

Jutting out into the Mediterranean, Tyre, founded at the start of the third millennium BC, was known as the "Queen of the Seas".

The city was added to Unesco's World Heritage list in 1984.

Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Helen Tunnah said Tyre was a particularly bad situation for evacuees but the United Nation was making special evacuation plans for non-critical personnel.

Ms Tunnah said New Zealanders, mainly visitors, were spread throughout Lebanon and even in parts of Beirut it was not easy to get evacuees to safe points.

There were now thought to be close to 90 New Zealanders wanting to get out of Lebanon, according to registrations on the ministry's website.

While phone lines to Lebanon remained open the ministry was getting in direct contact with the stranded New Zealanders and would tell them where to go once formal evacuation was under way.

Ms Tunnah confirmed that among those they had contacted was the wedding party of 14 New Zealanders featured by the Herald this week.

They were expected to be evacuated by the British Navy, which has already picked up 180 priority evacuees on the HMS Gloucester from Beirut.

They were being shipped to Cyprus and the destroyer was expected to continue ferrying people over the next few days.

The British High Commission said some 4500 British nationals had indicated they wanted to leave Lebanon and were expected to be evacuated to Cyprus within the week and the Cypriot Government was gearing up for the influx of foreign nationals.

Other countries were deploying helicopters, warships, chartered ferries and buses to move the thousands of trapped foreigners in what has become one of the biggest mass evacuations since World War II.