Chloe Lewin, 24, from London, told News she is due to get a flight out of Lebanon on Friday.
“Keir Starmer’s telling everyone to get out but we can’t,” she said.
“You can’t get out this week because they’re [flights] all full and every time you get to the last page of the booking, it just crashes and it says you can’t book a flight.
“And then people I know who have had flights, they’re all getting cancelled.
“My friends were meant to leave this morning on Egyptair – that got cancelled, so they can’t get out. “
Speaking of her other British friends in Lebanon, she said they felt helpless and were waiting to be evacuated.
The British Embassy is telling Britons to “get out”, she said, adding: “They’re not helping us so we can’t. There’s nothing we can do.”
The freelance journalist, who has lived in Beirut since January 2023, described the atmosphere in the part of the city she is living in as calm but also “scary because you never know what’s going to happen next”.
Talking about how hard it is for people to leave Lebanon, she said: “I want to stay but I’m leaving…
“Even though we’re technically expats and we’re not from here, people have lives here as well. People have jobs here. People have spent seven years here, two years here.
“It’s not as simple as just leaving.”