Daily evacuations of Canadians from Lebanon by ship will end on Saturday and most Canadians who want to leave will have likely left by then, senior government officials said at a briefing on Friday.

Officials would not provide details but said any Canadians who still want to leave after Saturday will be given assistance and there could be further transport provided in coming days.

There are no plans for another evacuation through Tyre in south Lebanon, so any remaining Canadians who want to leave will have to make it to Beirut to be evacuated, officials said.

About 40,000 Canadians registered with the Canadian consulate in Beirut before registrations were stopped. Officials at Friday's briefing said Canada had assisted 12,500 people in leaving Lebanon as of Friday, with 1,005 of those departing for Cyprus on Friday. If another 1,000 leave Saturday, an estimated 26,500 Canadians will remain in Lebanon, although officials say it's difficult to be certain of accurate numbers.

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

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

Some Canadians had waited to leave Lebanon in the hopes that Wednesday's meeting between world leaders in Rome would end in calls for a ceasefire. That didn't happen.

"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."

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

The Foreign Affairs website is warning evacuees that they have received reports of people posing as Canadian government officials and fraudulently charging transportation fees to the embarkation port.

"All costs related to the evacuation of Canadian citizens from Lebanon will be borne by the Government of Canada," the website statement says.

Foreign countries have been rushing to evacuate their nationals from Lebanon after Israel responded to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants with a military offensive.

After more than two weeks of fighting, the confirmed death toll on the Lebanese side is at least 437. Fifty-two people have been killed in Israel.

At least eight Canadians have been killed in the military offensive. One UN observer is listed as missing and presumed dead, after an Israeli bomb hit a UN observer post.

With files from The Canadian Press