Canadian charter flights leaving Lebanon have hundreds of empty seats, Global Affairs says | CBC News

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) says two flights chartered by the federal government to bring Canadians out of Lebanon left Beirut for Istanbul Thursday with just 275 passengers and 379 empty seats.

In Paris on Thursday for the Francophonie Summit, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told reporters there were 654 seats on those two flights.

“Please take the seats,” Joly said. “At this point, not all seats are taken by Canadians.”

Shortly after Joly’s media availability, her department issued a press release saying those two flights collectively carried 275 passengers, not all of them Canadian. The department said the passengers included citizens of “like-minded countries” like Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and the U.S.

GAC officials said the exact number of Canadians flown out Thursday will be available Friday after the department reviews the flight manifests. Officials also confirmed the number of empty seats.

“Global Affairs Canada has increased its surge capacity at the Emergency Watch and Response Centre in Ottawa to ensure we contact all Canadians in Lebanon who have accepted our offer for seats on commercial flights,” the department said in its release.

“The team is working around the clock and has reached out to more than 2,300 individuals to offer flight options,” it added, an increase over the 1,700 people contacted as of Tuesday.

Earlier this week, GAC officials at a technical briefing told reporters that of those 1,700 people in Lebanon it had contacted at the time, only one-third of them had taken up the offered seats.

The department said there will be nearly 900 seats available between Friday and Sunday.

‘We’re not getting anywhere with the embassy’

The push to get Canadians out of Lebanon comes as Israel warns residents of more than 20 towns in the country to evacuate, and as it continues its military operations in the country.

Israel bombed central Beirut in the early hours of Thursday after its forces suffered their deadliest day on the Lebanese front in a year of clashes against the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least six people were killed.

Some Canadians in the region told CBC News they’ve tried in vain to contact the Canadian embassy in Lebanon to get seats on the flights.

“We’re not getting anywhere with the embassy. I’ve written to them multiple times. And just, nothing,” Ferial Elkadri told CBC News Network’s Andrew Nichols on Wednesday.

She said she is in Lebanon with her husband, one-year-old son and six-month-old daughter.

Elkadri said she and her daughter are Canadian citizens but her husband and son — who was born in Lebanon — have Lebanese passports.

“I can go and my daughter can go, but my husband and my son can’t go,” she said.

“I was asked yesterday, ‘Why don’t I go?’ And I said, ‘Well, why would I go? I can’t leave them behind.’ So, we all stick together.”

Global Affairs Canada says Canadians and their immediate families can qualify for seats on the government-arranged charters — though all passengers are responsible for the $330US airfare.

GAC deferred CBC’s questions on its definition of “immediate family” to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which did not immediately respond.

An 8-day trip to safety

Some Canadians in Lebanon have been taking matters into their own hands.

Kumayl Takache said he flew to Lebanon to help his parents, his sister and his two nephews flee the country.

The family spent eight days travelling through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey to get to France. They arrived Monday.

Takache said his nephews were traumatized by what they experienced.

“Whenever they hear any loud noises — even if a door shuts suddenly — they think it’s an airstrike,” he told As It Happens host Nil Köksal on Wednesday.

“They like to draw, so all their drawings at the moment are buildings getting blown up. That kind of stuff.”

He said the drive to Beirut, which usually takes about an hour, took them 13 hours.

“There were airstrikes while we were on the road. Like next to the road, [and] on the road,” Takache said.

“I actually know a a Canadian couple who was living there, and they both died in the airstrike. They were trying to take an alternate route, and building was bombed where they were passing and they didn’t make it.”

He said the journey has cost his family between $10,000 and $20,000. The family even had to ditch their car in Syria. He said they’re renting in France for a month, hoping the situation stabilizes enough to allow them to return home. If it doesn’t, they’ll continue on to Canada.

“At the moment we’re just thinking, ‘We’ve got to get out of here with our lives. The car doesn’t matter,'” he said.

“We’re probably not going to have a house when we go back.”