A US Marine doctor with a nine-month-old baby on a Beirut beach on Friday. (AP)

Beirut, July 21 (Reuters): US helicopters plucked Americans from Beirut today and hundreds of Canadians arrived on the shores of Turkey in a huge evacuation of foreign nationals fleeing Israeli bombing in Lebanon.

Turkey volunteered to become a second transit point for the growing tide of distressed evacuees after Cyprus warned it could no longer bear the strain. US troops watched from rooftops around the American embassy in the Lebanese capital as evacuees fleeing Israel’s bombardment boarded helicopters taking them to US warships offshore.

At a nearby beach, people with suitcases on top of their heads and some cradling babies in their arms queued for processing before climbing aboard a landing craft to take them to waiting ships.

“I felt like I was held hostage, not in a room but in a country,” said Touf Hasoun, 45, from Pittsburg, looking relieved to be on board the USS Trenton headed for Cyprus.

A Canadian ship with 1,000 evacuees has already docked in Turkey, and more than 100 Swedish nationals escaping the violence in Lebanon disembarked at the southern port of Mersin. “They (the Israelis) are targeting civilians. They call themselves civilised, but they are barbaric. I don’t want my kid to grow up like that,” said Habib Kheil, a professor of mathematics from Michigan.