On 6 June 2006 1st Battalion 8th Marines deployed as the ground combat element of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. On 18 July 2006, it was announced that the 24th MEU, along with the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group, would be directed to Lebanon, to assist in the evacuation of almost 15,000 U.S. nationals who had become trapped in Lebanon, following a series of Israeli strikes which made the Beirut International Airport nonoperational, and similarly destroyed a number of major roads out of the country. This would become known as the largest evacuation of American citizens from a foreign country since the Vietnam War.