A Canadian effort is underway to conduct airlifts out of Sudan and two military vessels have arrived off its coast, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday, as the government looked for a fragile ceasefire to help evacuation efforts in the embattled East African country.
“It’s an extremely difficult situation,” Trudeau said. “There’s very limited places where those airlifts can happen from.”
One Canadian in Sudan, 29-year-old Waddaha Medani, said she made the trip to an airbase on the outskirts of the battle-torn capital of Khartoum Tuesday morning after she learned of an apparent evacuation flight.
She told The Canadian Press in messages exchanged Tuesday that she boarded a German plane set to depart for Jordan, where she was told she would then be able to get on a flight home to Ottawa.
Trudeau had said on Monday that 58 Canadians departed the country on a German flight and that a C-17 transport plane was in the region.
A spokesperson for the Defence Department said the frigate HMCS Montreal and the supply ship MV Asterix were re-tasked to the Red Sea to support the effort in Sudan, adding that the region was part of its sail plan.
A press release from March 26, when the vessels were deployed, says they were headed to the Indo-Pacific region as part of Operation Projection. It was heralded as the first deployment of an East Coast crew to the Indo-Pacific, part of Canada’s plan to boost its presence there from two frigates to three.
A CH-148 Cyclone helicopter is part of the deployment on the frigate.
On Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said more than 100 Canadians had by then made it out of Sudan.
She thanked Germany, France, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia for “helping evacuate” the Canadians.
Global Affairs Canada said they were among 1,703 Canadians registered with the government and being contacted by federal authorities. Of that number, 573 people have asked for assistance, it said.
The federal government is also providing information to people who are attempting to leave the country on their own, Joly said, and safe passage for Canadians has already been negotiated with several other countries in the region, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Egypt.
While she said the situation was “still fragile,” Joly said a three-day ceasefire announced Monday night was helping evacuation efforts.
“We are working on making sure that we do our own civilian evacuation, but we’re not losing time. And we’re making sure that this is happening as we speak,” she said.
But fighting continued, despite the generals heading the Sudanese military and the rival Rapid Support Forces pledging Tuesday to observe the truce.
Explosions, gunfire and the roar of warplanes were heard around the capital region on Tuesday.
Residents reported escalating clashes in West Darfur province, where the RSF has its roots, born from the Janjaweed militias accused of widespread atrocities in putting down a rebellion in the early 2000s.
A number of short ceasefires over the past week have failed or brought only small breaks in the battles raging since April 15 between rival forces led by the country’s two top generals.
While the lulls have led to evacuations of hundreds of foreigners, they have brought little relief to millions of Sudanese people who are struggling to find food, shelter and medical care in a country where a third of the population of 46 million already needed humanitarian aid.
Civilians are among the at least 459 people killed and 4,070 wounded since fighting began, the UN World Health Organization said, citing Sudan’s health ministry.
Trudeau said he spoke with the chairperson of the African Union to offer Canada’s support.
Defence Minister Anita Anand said Canada is trying to help anyone who is requesting assistance but called the situation “extremely volatile and extremely intense.”
TORONTO – The Professional Women’s Hockey League has revealed the jersey designs for its six newly named teams.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Gabriela Dabrowski of Ottawa and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe rallied to defeat Americans Caroline Dolehide and Desirae Krawczyk 4-6, 6-3, (10-6) on Thursday at the WTA Finals.
With the win, Dabrowski and Routliffe completed the round-robin stage with a perfect 3-0 record at the season-ending tournament, which features the WTA Tour’s top eight women’s doubles teams.
The No. 2 seeds secured first place in their pool with the win, rallying from a set and break down to finish the match in 93 minutes.
Dolehide and Krawczyk, who defeated Dabrowski and Routliffe in the final at Toronto’s National Bank Open in August, closed their first WTA Finals with a 0-3 record.
Dabrowski and Routliffe will face American Nicole Melichar-Martinez and Australia’s Ellen Perez, who finished second in their group with a 2-1 record, in Friday’s semifinal.
The final is scheduled for Saturday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A strong typhoon was forecast to hit the northern Philippines on Thursday, prompting a new round of evacuations in a region still recovering from back-to-back storms a few weeks ago.
Typhoon Yinxing is the 13th to batter the disaster-prone Southeast Asian nation this season.
“I really pity our people but all of them are tough,” Gov. Marilou Cayco of the province of Batanes said by telephone. Her province was ravaged by recent destructive storms and is expected to be affected by Yinxing’s fierce wind and rain.
Tens of thousands of villagers were returning to emergency shelters and disaster-response teams were again put on alert in Cagayan and other northern provinces near the expected path of Yinxing. The typhoon was located about 175 kilometers (109 miles) east of Aparri town in Cagayan province on Thursday morning.
The slow-moving typhoon, locally named Marce, was packing sustained winds of up to 165 kilometers (102 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 205 kph (127 mph) and was forecast to hit or come very near to the coast of Cagayan and outlying islands later Thursday.
The coast guard, army, air force and police were put on alert. Inter-island ferries and cargo services and domestic flights were suspended in northern provinces.
Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey hit the northern Philippines in recent weeks, leaving at least 151 people dead and affecting nearly 9 million others. More than 14 billion pesos ($241 million) worth of rice, corn and other crops and infrastructure were damaged.
The deaths and destruction from the storms prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare a day of national mourning on Monday when he visited the worst-hit province of Batangas, south of the capital, Manila. At least 61 people perished in the coastal province.
Trami dumped one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, including in Batangas.
“We want to avoid the loss of lives due to calamities,” Marcos said in Talisay town in Batangas, where he brought key Cabinet members to reassure storm victims of rapid government help. “Storms nowadays are more intense, extensive and powerful.”
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused ships to run aground and smash into houses in the central Philippines.
