The destroyer HMS Gloucester docked in Beirut yesterday afternoon to pick up the first Britons to leave Lebanon by sea. They are among tens of thousands of foreigners who had made their homes or taken their holidays in the reborn Lebanon and are now fleeing as Israel makes good its threat to bomb the country back to its war-torn past.

The most urgent cases — the sick, the pregnant and unaccompanied children — have already been taken out by helicopter and some Britons made their own way to Syria, where they caught flights out of the region. The first batch of evacuees flown to the safety of Cyprus were last night describing their shock at Lebanon’s rapid descent into anarchy.

Hussein Jafar, a computer technician from Nottingham, told The Times how he and his family paid $200 (£110) to make a 50-mile taxi trip to the British Embassy along roads being shelled by the Israelis. His family had fled his wife’s home village of Bezourie, in the south of the country, after six local people died in an air raid.

“I thought I have to put my family in danger for one hour to escape to Beirut rather than stay in Bezourie and see them killed in front of me,” said Mr Jafar, 36, who was accompanied by his pregnant wife and two children.

“There was an Israeli warship shelling the road while we were in the taxi. It took us 2½ hours to make the journey because the driver had to take a very roundabout route.”

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that 10,000 Britons and 12,000 people with dual British and Lebanese nationality were eligible for evacuation. About 4,000 have asked for government help in leaving the country, the biggest rescue since Dunkirk.

Some of the 176 people who boarded HMS Gloucester yesterday gave harrowing accounts of their ordeal. Samantha Bradley, from the West Midlands, who had been visiting Lebanon with her two children, said: “When we were still in the house, and they were bombing near to the house, [the children] were frightened from the noise and then the next two days up in the hills it was quite quiet. But last night when they bombed the army base it was really, really scary.”

As the destroyer set sail for Cyprus, Commander Mike Patterson said his passengers were in good spirits. “They will all have their own bunks to sleep in and we have been able to keep them in family groups. The chef has also provided food for them and they should be getting that shortly,” he said.

The sea lanes between Beirut and the Cypriot port of Larnaca will be busy for days, with warships and chartered vessels ferrying their human cargo.

France has chartered the Iera Petra, a ferry capable of carrying 1,200 people. About 8,000 French citizens have asked to be evacuated. The United States is deploying warships to escort a chartered cruise ship and Canada, which has up to 50,000 citizens in Lebanon, has hired six vessels. An Italian warship has taken 400 people to Cyprus, and is returning to collect more.

HMS Gloucester was due to dock in Larnaca this morning, and the British refugees will be placed on flights leaving Cyprus as soon as possible. Extra flights are being laid on to take people off the Mediterranean island. Foreign Office officials said that those fleeing would be expected to pay for their own flights to Britain.

Another Navy destroyer, HMS York, is expected to sail from Beirut with a second consignment of Britons today. Four Navy vessels, HMS Illustrious, an aircraft carrier, HMS Bulwark, a commando assault ship, HMS St Albans, a Type 23 frigate, and Fort Victoria, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary support vessel, have been steaming to Lebanon since the weekend.

The carrier and the commando ship will be capable of taking more than 4,000 refugees to Cyprus at any one time. The Ministry of Defence has also chartered a Greek ferry to help with the evacuations.

Evacuation is, however, the preserve of richer people. The advice to 80,000 Sri Lankan and 30,000 Filipino migrant workers in Lebanon is to stay put.

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