Canada to pull children of its diplomats out of Israel amid fears of Iranian attack
Ottawa approves temporary relocation of children and their guardians to a third country, days after warning citizens to avoid all travel to the region
Canada has decided to pull the children of its diplomats and their guardians out of Israel amid fears of a widened conflict in the Middle East, the Canadian foreign ministry said on Thursday.
The fear of regional escalation comes amid threats to attack Israel by Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, following last week’s assassination of top Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Jerusalem has neither claimed nor denied responsibility for the high-profile assassination of Haniyeh, which came hours after Israel killed Shukr following a Hezbollah rocket attack that killed 12 children in the Golan Heights days earlier.
The threats of retaliation from Iran and Hezbollah have fanned fears of a broader conflict in a region already on edge amid Israel’s 10-month-old war with Hamas in Gaza, which began with the terror group’s brutal October 7 invasion of southern Israel.
The recent tensions have fanned fears of a broader conflict.
Canada’s plan to evacuate the families of diplomats due to fears of an attack by Iran and its proxies was first reported in Hebrew media on Tuesday but was not immediately confirmed by the country’s foreign ministry.
The foreign ministry, in a statement on Thursday, said it had approved temporarily relocating the diplomats’ children and their guardians to a safe third country. It added that diplomats stationed in Ramallah in the West Bank and in Beirut do not have dependents living with them.
Canada on Saturday warned citizens to avoid all travel to Israel, saying the regional armed conflict endangered security. It also urged its citizens not to travel to Gaza and the West Bank.
The embassies in Tel Aviv and Beirut and the representative office to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank “all remain fully operational and continue to provide essential services to Canadians,” the ministry said in a statement.
Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza was triggered by the October 7 terror onslaught in which some 1,200 people were slaughtered and 251 were taken hostage as thousands of Hamas-led terrorists rampaged across southern Israel.
In the months of war in Gaza, through which Israel seeks to dismantle Hamas’s governing and military capabilities, the Hamas-run health ministry says more than 39,000 people have been killed or are presumed dead, although the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 331.
