Trudeau repeats call for Lebanon ceasefire after third Canadian killed

OTTAWA — The prime minister offered condolences today to the family of a Canadian who was killed in the ongoing fighting in Lebanon.

Justin Trudeau reiterated Canada’s call for a ceasefire in Lebanon and in Gaza when he spoke with reporters at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Laos.

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Global Affairs Canada says officials are in contact with family of the person who died, but the department has not publicly identified them.

Two other Canadians were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon in late September as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah continues to escalate.

Global Affairs says it has helped more than 1,050 Canadians, permanent residents and their immediate family members to leave Lebanon on chartered flights, and it’s urging people to get out while they can.

There are more than 25,000 Canadians registered as being in Lebanon, but the government has said it believes as many as 45,000 Canadians are in the country.

“My heart goes out to the family of the Canadian who was killed, the families of everyone with loved ones in the region who are affected by the ongoing violence,” Trudeau said.

“We need that violence to end. We need a ceasefire in Lebanon and in Gaza, we need to get more humanitarian aid in, we need to see the hostages released, we need to see a credible path towards a two-state solution.”

Canadians Hussein Tabaja and Daad Tabaja were killed in an airstrike on Sept. 25. Their son Kamal said they were caught in an hours-long traffic jam trying to escape the violence in southern Lebanon.

Israeli airstrikes in central Beirut killed 22 people and wounded dozens more, Lebanese officials said Thursday.

The air raid was the deadliest attack on central Beirut in over a year of war, hitting two residential buildings in neighbourhoods that have swelled with displaced people fleeing Israeli bombardment elsewhere in the country.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television and Israeli media said the strikes aimed to kill Wafiq Safa, a top security official with the group. Al-Manar said Safa was not in either building at the time. The Israeli military had no comment on the reports.

Israel has escalated its campaign against Hezbollah with waves of heavy airstrikes across Lebanon and a ground invasion at the border after a year of exchanges of fire between the two rivals.

The same day as the Beirut explosions, Israeli forces fired on United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and wounded two peacekeepers from Indonesia, drawing widespread condemnation.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in support of Hamas and the Palestinians, drawing Israeli airstrikes in retaliation.

Israel says its stepped-up campaign in recent weeks aims to push Hezbollah away from the border to allow tens of thousands of its citizens evacuated from the area to return home.

More than 2,100 Lebanese — including Hezbollah fighters, civilians and medical personnel — have been killed the past year by Israeli strikes, more than two-thirds of them in the past few weeks.

Hezbollah attacks have killed 29 civilians as well as 39 Israeli soldiers in northern Israel since October 2023 and in southern Lebanon since Israel launched its ground invasion on Sept. 30. So far, Israeli troops have been operating in a narrow strip of a few kilometres along the border.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.

— With files from The Associated Press

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press