BERLIN

Germany is readying plans for a mass evacuation of its nationals from the Middle East amid mounting concerns over an escalation of a conflict between Israel on one side and Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah group on the other, a press report said Monday.

The German military, or Bundeswehr, is preparing for a large-scale evacuation operation for German citizens in the Middle East amid intelligence information that suggests that a retaliatory strike by Iran against Israel is imminent this week, according to the weekly Der Spiegel news magazine.

Germany's air force has been readying a small fleet of A400M transport aircraft that could shuttle people from Beirut to Cyprus, Spiegel added, without revealing its sources.

The report said analysts are pretty sure that Hezbollah will also launch a massive attack on Israel from Lebanon. At that point at the latest, an expansion of the conflict would hardly be able to be stopped, as Israel would have to react.​​​​​​​

On July 29, Germany called on its citizens in Lebanon to urgently leave the country as tensions were growing after Israel blamed Hezbollah for an attack that killed several children in the occupied Golan Heights.

“We are deeply concerned about the situation of Germans in Lebanon,” said Sebastian Fischer, spokesman for Germany's Foreign Ministry, in Berlin.

“We urge these German citizens to leave Lebanon as long as there's still time,” he added.