Brazilian Foreign Relations Minister Celso Amorim will fly to the Turkish port city of Adana on Wednesday, to coordinate the effort to evacuate Brazilian citizens from Lebanon, government spokesman Andre Singer said on Tuesday.

The minister was participating in World Trade Organization negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland.

On Monday, Amorim was engaged in diplomatic effort to obtain a guarantee from Israel that bus convoys transporting Brazilians from Lebanon to Syria would not be targeted by the Israeli forces.

On Tuesday, 309 Brazilian citizens were evacuated by bus from the Bekaa Valley, where 90 percent of the Brazilians in Lebanon concentrated. Another 20 buses evacuating Brazilians from Lebanon are expected to arrive in Damascus by Wednesday.

Because of the risk of attacks, it took convoys 14 hours to arrive in Syrian capital, Damascus, from the Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border. The usual journey before the conflict takes one and a half hours.

Two commercial planes with 202 seats each will be leaving from Damascus to Brazil on Wednesday and Thursday.

A government plane carrying 80 citizens evacuated from Lebanon arrived Tuesday morning in Brazil. Brazilian authorities plan to evacuate a total of 1,500 Brazilians from the conflict area by the end of this week.

Source: Xinhua