Some 2,000 overseas Filipino workers have been ordered out of southern Lebanon due to escalated violence in that area, Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Esteban Conejos said yesterday.

"Pack up and run," said Gilbert Asuque, spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs. "All Filipinos, get out of there and go to the embassy or the relocation sites.

This is forced evacuation."

Asuque said that at 7 a.m. this morning, Conejos instructed the Philippine embassy in Beirut to raise the alert level in southern Lebanon to 4, the highest in a four-tiered system, after the Israeli Defense Force warned residents there to clear the area ahead of an expected ground offensive.

Alert level 4 makes evacuation mandatory for Filipino nationals.

However, Asuque said, alert level 3, which asks OFWs to stay put, is still in place for the rest of Lebanon.

The DFA spokesman also said the first flight of almost 300 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to flee war-torn Lebanon is en route to Manila from Damascus Syria after a delay when the original chartered airliner chartered airliner developed problems and had to be replaced.

Conejos said they replaced the Emirates Airlines 11 originally chartered to fly the OFWs home with an Airlink A310.

Radio reports said the returning workers are expected to arrive in Manila between 1 to 2 a.m. today.

At least 294 OFWs who left Lebanon in two batches - the first, with 188, leaving Thursday, the second, with 106, following on Friday - are expected to be on the flight home.

"The Israeli forces are reported to be ready to cross into the Lebanese border. We don't want our Filipinos to be caught in the crossfire," Asuque said. "The instruction is to pluck out the Filipinos from the area and bring them to the embassy and the relocation site in Church of the Miraculous Medal."

Asked if the embassy knows where the 2,000 OFWs are located, Asuque said the details of the evacuation from southern Lebanon are left to Special Envoy Roy Cimatu of the Presidential Middle East Preparedness Team.

At the same time, he said some embassy personnel from Riyadh are now in Beirut to assist in the Oplan: Sagip OFW sa Lebanon.

With this development, Asuque said, the embassy is also organizing the next group of OFWs to be repatriated to Manila. "We don't know if this is still via Damascus. The situation must be assessed there," he added.

There are an estimated 30,000 Filipinos in Lebanon.

Asuque said Philippine Embassy officials were in touch with coordinators in the Filipino community to help them evacuate safely.

He said the Philippine labor attaché in Lebanon has been told to ask employers to let their Filipino workers leave.

Media reports in Manila said some employers have refused to let go of their Filipino maids because they have been paid in advance, while other workers have been taken by their employers to safety in areas where they could not be reached, or have been abandoned.

Filipinos in Lebanon themselves, specifically Negrenses, appear split on whether to come home or not. Some fear for their lives, while others say they live away from danger areas and want to continue to work there, said Jeff Esperanzate of Bacolod City's Office of Sectoral Concerns.

Joy Lopez of Murcia, whose wife Maryann works as a domestic helper in Beirut, said he talked to her Friday and said she was scared and wanted to come home but her employer would not let her leave. Lopez said Maryann told him she was in the mountain rest house of her employer about an hour away from Beirut.

"But as I talked to her I could hear the sound of bombings; even I was scared," he said.

Raymund Bocalon of Murcia, who talked to his wife Melba, 25, through the provincial Capitol hotline in Bacolod, said she told him she was okay as she was staying with her employer in their mountain retreat. Melba has been working in Lebanon as a domestic helper for two years and has no plan to come home.

A worried Edna Quibete of La Carlota City, whose two daughters are working in Lebanon, was weeping when she arrived at the capitol. After finally talking with her daughters, she said they assured her they were safe and did not want to come home.

Quibete said her daughters Shiela, 27, and Erna, 24, told her they were far from where the fighting was happening although they could hear airplanes flying overhead.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Thursday made a "special appeal to all combatant forces" in Lebanon to spare Filipino workers. She said her government was eager to achieve a "zero-casualty goal" in the evacuation.