After evacuations from Lebanon slowed to a trickle over the last few days, a huge crowd gathered at the dock in Beirut on Thursday, waiting to be evacuated by Canadian officials.

More than 1,700 Canadians arrived at the harbour, ready to sail away from the war-torn region on one of four ships. The fleet includes two large cruise liners and two smaller vessels.

Canadian officials said it was the largest crowd since the first days of the evacuation.

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has raged since July 12, but some in the crowd had hoped Wednesday's meeting between world leaders in Rome would help end the conflict.

"I didn't contact the embassy because I thought there might be a ceasefire or something, but (Wednesday) there was no declaration," Amal Jawhar, a graduate student at Concordia University in Montreal, told The Canadian Press.

"We expected this to last a few days, not a few weeks."

After Thursday, about 11,500 Canadians will have fled Lebanon. Foreign Affairs officials said their goal is to complete the evacuation by Friday, but it's estimated about 38,000 Canadians are still in the country.

Meanwhile, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said an unknown number of evacuees have been refused entry into Canada, because they posed a security risk.

"There have been some security concerns in a very small amount of cases. Those have been spotted," Day told CP, after touring Montreal's international airport where evacuees arrived from Larnaca, Cyprus.

'Their houses are gone'

Some of the Canadians who were evacuated from Tyre on Wednesday said those who remain in the south of Lebanon are in grave danger.

Hassan Tohme, a Canadian whisked out of Tyre aboard a cruise liner commissioned by Foreign Affairs, said many Canadians can't find passports and money which are now buried under rubble, and are therefore unable to reach evacuation points.

"They can't come because their houses are gone and bombed and destroyed. They need a lot of money to get down and they don't have money," Hassan Tohme, an 18-year-old who was born in Ottawa but has spent most of his life in Lebanon told The Canadian Press.

The future looks grim for those left behind, he said.

"They will die ... The Israelis don't differentiate between human (civilians) and the army."

Another evacuee described the south as a dangerous war zone and said his family didn't think twice when UN officials arrived at their home to evacuate them. He said the trip back to Canada would be like returning to "paradise."

"You know 1943, the (Second World) War? It's the same thing," said Ali Soufane, a Windsor, Ont., resident.

"There's no phones. No cars. No gas"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said about 10,000 Canadians in total will be evacuated from Lebanon. Initially, officials estimated as many as 50,000 Canadians were living in Lebanon and may need evacuation.

Officials have offered little explanation about the discrepancy, except to suggest that some Canadians who initially wanted to leave Lebanon may have changed their minds.

Louis de Lorimier, Canada's ambassador to Lebanon, said it's difficult to make accurate estimates during war times.

"It's a war situation -- we can't obsess about these questions," the ambassador said.

Officials in Beirut originally said 49 Canadians left Tyre on Wednesday, but that number was corrected when the evacuees reached Larnaca Thursday morning local time.

Tyre is the nexus of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas.

With Wednesday and Thursday's evacuations, Canada is one of the last countries still pulling citizens out of Lebanon.

With files from The Canadian Press