Canada Urges Citizens to Leave Lebanon While Flights Are Available

Smoke billows after Israeli shelling on the southern Lebanese border village of Dhaira on October 16, 2023. (AFP)
Smoke billows after Israeli shelling on the southern Lebanese border village of Dhaira on October 16, 2023. (AFP)
TT

Canada Urges Citizens to Leave Lebanon While Flights Are Available

Smoke billows after Israeli shelling on the southern Lebanese border village of Dhaira on October 16, 2023. (AFP)
Smoke billows after Israeli shelling on the southern Lebanese border village of Dhaira on October 16, 2023. (AFP)

Canadians should consider leaving Lebanon while they can because of heightened security risks in the region, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said on Monday, after Ottawa helped evacuate a group of Canadians from the West Bank into Jordan.

"As the crisis in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel continues to unfold, the security situation in the region is becoming increasingly volatile," Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said on X, the platform formerly called Twitter.

"Canadians in Lebanon should consider leaving while commercial flights remain available," Joly said.

Like other countries, Canada is trying to evacuate citizens, permanent residents and their families from the region after Hamas' deadly attack on Israel this month and the subsequent Israeli military retaliation.

Canada has been using two military planes to airlift people who needed help leaving Israel, and earlier on Monday, Joly said the first group of Canadians had safely crossed from the West Bank into Jordan.

There are also about 300 people in Gaza that Canada is seeking to bring out through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.

Five Canadians have been killed in the Hamas attack on Israel, an official from the foreign ministry said on Sunday, while three are still missing.



Lebanon's New President Says to Ensure State Has Exclusive Right to Carry Arms

This handout photo released by the Lebanese parliament shows Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun delivering a speech after his election in Beirut, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by LEBANESE PARLIAMENT / AFP)
This handout photo released by the Lebanese parliament shows Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun delivering a speech after his election in Beirut, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by LEBANESE PARLIAMENT / AFP)
TT

Lebanon's New President Says to Ensure State Has Exclusive Right to Carry Arms

This handout photo released by the Lebanese parliament shows Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun delivering a speech after his election in Beirut, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by LEBANESE PARLIAMENT / AFP)
This handout photo released by the Lebanese parliament shows Newly elected Lebanese president Joseph Aoun delivering a speech after his election in Beirut, on January 9, 2025. (Photo by LEBANESE PARLIAMENT / AFP)

Lebanon's newly elected President Joseph Aoun told lawmakers on Thursday that he will work to ensure the state has the exclusive right to carry arms, in his first speech at parliament after he was elected.

His comments were seen partly as a reference to Hezbollah's arsenal, which he had not commented on publicly as the former army commander.

In a first round of voting Thursday, Aoun received 71 out of 128 votes but fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to win outright. Of the rest, 37 lawmakers cast blank ballots and 14 voted for “sovereignty and the constitution.”
In the second round, he received 99 votes.

In his speech in parliament, Aoun also pledged to carry out reforms to the judicial system and fight corruption.

He promised to control the country’s borders and “ensure the activation of the security services and to discuss a strategic defense policy that will enable the Lebanese state to remove the Israeli occupation from all Lebanese territories” in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military has not yet withdrawn from dozens of villages.

He also vowed to reconstruct “what the Israeli army destroyed in the south, east and (Beirut’s southern) suburbs.”

Thursday’s vote came weeks after a tenuous ceasefire agreement halted a 14-month conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and at a time when Lebanon’s leaders are seeking international assistance for reconstruction.

Aoun said he would call for parliamentary consultations as soon as possible on naming a new prime minister.