Toronto man says his family needs Canadian help to get out of Gaza despite ceasefire

With one of his sons in a Gaza hospital, Toronto resident Nahed El-Khalidy said the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came too late to save his daughter's life.

With one of his sons in a Gaza hospital, Toronto resident Nahed El-Khalidy said the recently announced ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is good news, though it came too late to save his daughter’s life.

El-Khalidy said his daughter Caroline, 27, was killed Monday when an Israeli airstrike hit a building near her location in Gaza. The blast, which left his 17-year-old son Mahmoud seriously injured, came one day after the teenager was turned back at the Egyptian border as he tried with other family members to escape to Canada.

He said his son needs medical care that isn’t currently available in Gaza amid shortages of medicine and electricity, and he wants the Canadian government to help.

“He needs surgery urgently, now,” El-Khalidy said in an interview Wednesday. “He needs oxygen and there’s no oxygen, he can’t open his eyes, he can’t move his hands.”

The four-day truce announced Wednesday will free dozens of Israeli hostages held by militants as well as Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. It will also bring a large influx of aid to the besieged territory. The logistics of the ceasefire, expected to begin Thursday morning, were still being worked out late Wednesday.

“It will be good,” El-Khalidy said of the ceasefire, adding that it will make it easier for people to bring water and medicine to hospital patients like his son.

El-Khalidy, an accountant who worked as a university professor in Gaza before moving to Canada three years ago, said all his family members — except for Mahmoud — were on a list of people with Canadian ties allowed to cross into Egypt Sunday.

A Canadian permanent resident, El-Khalidy said he had contacted Global Affairs and was told that his son should go to the border anyway, and that Canadian officials would help him cross with his family.