Ontario’s Minister of Health Christine Elliott says outdoor sports amenities will reopen in just over two weeks, possibly even before the province’s stay-at-home order expires.
The comments followed the defeat of an NDP motion at Queen’s Park to reopen outdoor amenities like golf courses and tennis courts on Monday, by a vote of 63 to 21.
Elliott said while the weather is getting better every day, “today is not the day to open everything up.”
“I believe it would be irresponsible for us to do that today,” she said. “But we are following the evidence on a daily basis and it will happen on or before June 2.”
She added that events, summer camps, golf and tennis are all slated for reopening if clinical evidence supports it.
Update: Ontario’s Minister of Health says outdoor sports amenities (golf, soccer, etc) will reopen “on or before June 2nd” @CityNewspic.twitter.com/tF6KB81I0A
NDP leader Andrew Horwath said the Ford government was going against scientific data and advice.
“What we see here is a government that continues to not follow the science and not follow the advice of public health and their own science table, she said. “That has meant that people have not been able to participate in outdoor activities safely like golf, like shooting hoops, skateboarding those kinds of activities’
Ontario’s second stay-at-home order went into effect on April 8 and was initially set to expire in four weeks. It was then extended to six weeks on April 16 and set to expire May 20. Last week, a second extension was announced, pushing the date back to June 2.
At the time, Premier Doug Ford said his goal was to have the most normal July and August as possible and the extension was necessary to make that happen.
The scientific director of the advisory table, Dr. Peter Juni, has said outdoor activities like golf, tennis and beach volleyball are low risk and if physical distancing cannot be maintained during such activities, people should wear masks.
However he added that activities linked with the sports — like car-pooling or sharing a locker room — will need to be addressed as they pose a greater risk of COVID-19 exposure.
Ontario’s Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams also said the reason outdoor recreation facilities remain closed is not because the activity itself that is risky, but the other actions surrounding them.
“When you open up a lot of facilities, it’s not sometimes the activity, it’s the congregate activity before and after,” he said last week.
Premier Ford has said reopening the province depends on vaccination rates, which shifted into high gear over the weekend as the province administered its seven millionth dose.
“The more people can come out [to get vaccinated], the quicker we can open up. And we are going to open up very, very soon,” he said, adding that summer camps will be open this year.
Vaccination eligibility has now been expanded to anyone 18+ starting Tuesday, almost a week ahead of the original May 24 date due to an early delivery of vaccine shipments.
Ontario’s COVID-19 case numbers have seen a slow decline in recent weeks, with the province reporting 2,170 new COVID-19 cases and 4 additional deaths on Monday.
Ontario health officials say they are hopeful the current four-month interval between COVID-19 vaccine doses will be reduced as vaccine supply increases and more people get their first shots.
Provincial medical officer of health Dr. David Williams said the decision to increase the interval of the vaccines from the manufacturer recommended three or four weeks to four months was made to ensure “maximum benefit in the shortest time, with everybody getting one dose.”
That goal has been largely achieved with almost 60 per cent of the province’s population vaccinated with the first dose, he said.
“As we go forward … and we get lots of vaccine supply, we’re not going to leave it in fridges,” said Dr. Williams. “If we feel that we can go on to second doses with people, we certainly will — we won’t wait for the four months. We would like to do it sooner if we can.”
Dr. Williams added that along with supply, the decision will be influenced by how quickly all age groups are vaccinated with their first dose. The province expanded vaccine eligibility to all those 18 and over, starting Tuesday.
He also said that future second dose appointments that have already been booked are not set in stone. The province’s Covax booking system is flexible and appointments can be adjusted as per supply.
Ontario’s associate medical officer of health Dr. Barbara Yaffe added that she does not foresee the gap becoming “really short,” especially for the AstraZeneca vaccine.
“We want to make sure that people have enough of an immune response to the first shot,” she said. “With AstraZeneca usually, if you wait a little longer you get a better response to a booster, but we may not need to wait the full four months.”
Concerns have also been raised regarding the wastage of AstraZeneca doses being held in stock that are set to expire soon.
On the 300+ thousand doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine destined for Ontarian’s, sitting on ice at the moment, Ont’s Minister of Health says most second doses aren’t scheduled until late June. Saying “we have time” to make a decision. Some doses expire at the end of May. https://t.co/DQwEKLGNOK
Dr. Williams said that while a 12-week gap between shots is best for the AstraZeneca vaccine, he is also not willing to wait and give expired vaccines “at all under any means to anyone in Ontario.”
“That would be totally wrong,” he said. “If we can’t use it all, that is what we have to face.”
However, he added that the government is going to try and see if those vaccines can still be utilized before expiration “in a safe way, efficaciously … and with the proper protocols in place.”
He said that currently, not many people have reached the 12-week mark after the first shot and said that getting a second dose too soon will mean less than maximum benefits.
“But some may say ‘that’s fine with me’ … so we’re looking at how we might do that,” he said.
Another factor playing into the issue is where the vaccine is located. Dr. Williams said it is best not to move it around too much in order to avoid compromising the “cold chain” — the protocols in place to keep the vaccine at a sufficiently low temperature.
“It’s not just a matter of [having it], it’s a matter of where is it located and can we utilize it in a way, first that is effective, second it’s safe — the quality is maintained — and that the people receiving it fully understand if they’re getting it before 12 weeks — what does that mean? and how important is that to that person.”
He concluded that informed consent is vital and that safety and quality are the “top priority.”
“We’ll try to do what we can and utilize [the doses in stock], but expiration dates are expiration dates and you have to hold to that rule and you can’t utilize it past that date,” he said.
A second child has died of their injuries in hospital following a car crash in Vaughan Sunday afternoon.
Police said around noon, they received calls about a car going off the road on Athabasca Drive, just off Dufferin Street north of Teston Road, and hitting three people.
“A 10-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy were taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries,” police said in a news release late Monday evening. “Both children have since succumbed to their injuries in hospital.”
An adult male was also hurt and his injuries were non-life-threatening.
“The children were outside enjoying the weather, riding their bikes and a neighbour had come over to help with the bike chain,” explained York Regional Police Const. Laura Nicolle. “They were out on the driveway on their own property when the vehicle lost control, went off the roadway and collided with all of them.”
Photos from the scene show a black Mercedes sitting on a lawn, wedged underneath a tree and police evidence cones can be seen a few houses down.
Police said a 16-year-old driver from Richmond Hill was taken into custody.
Const. Nicolle said the crash happened in an area where the speed limit was 40 kilometres an hour, so officers would be looking at whether speed was a factor in the collision.
On Monday evening, police said they would upgrade the charges against the teen to two counts of Dangerous Operation Cause Death, two counts of Criminal Negligence Cause Death, Dangerous Operation Cause Bodily Harm and Criminal Negligence Cause Bodily Harm.
Editor’s note: Police corrected the age of the driver to 16 years old after initially saying he was 17 years old and also corrected the age of the other injured child to 10 years old after previously saying she was 11 years old.
Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine effort shifted into high gear on the weekend, administering its seven millionth dose as it prepared to accelerate immunization efforts even further in the coming week.
Premier Doug Ford, meanwhile, offered hope that the province’s summer camps would be given the green light to operate this season, though without providing any details.
Ford stated camps would be able to open for the coming summer, though did not specify whether he was referring to day or overnight facilities.
“The more people can come out [to get vaccinated], the quicker we can open up. And we are going to open up very, very soon,” said Ford. “And I have to say one thing about the summer camps — July 3 is usually the time they open and they’re opening up this year.”
A spokesman from his office later said details would be revealed before the provincial lifts if current stay-at-home order, which was recently extended to June 2 in a bid to help combat the pandemic’s third wave.
The Ontario Camps Association said it was “thrilled” by the Premier’s announcement.
— Ontario Camps Association (@OCACamps) May 16, 2021
Ford’s remarks came at a large vaccine clinic held west of Toronto that operated overnight in a bid to provide shots to those who could benefit from extended hours.
Organizers of Doses After Dark, which they dubbed the first mass overnight vaccination clinic in Canada, said it was well attended but may not have achieved the goal of vaccinating between 4,500 and 5,000 people through the night.
Paul Sharma, co-lead of Peel Region’s mass vaccination program, said the overnight clinic aimed to attract a wider range of people from across a region that’s long been one of the province’s most active COVID-19 hot spots.
“This was really targeted toward essential workers who are working non-traditional hours,” he said in an interview on Sunday. “Shift workers, taxi drivers, truck drivers ? but also to the younger age group, you know, the 18 to 39 (demographic), which we opened up a few weeks ago.”
Although a formal count of shots administered at the clinic was not immediately available, Sharma estimated that it reached 60 to 70 per cent of its target.
Despite the shortfall, however, Sharma said there was only a brief stretch between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m. when the clinic wasn’t operating at full capacity.
“People are interested in getting their vaccine. They’re willing to come in all different hours,” Sharma said.
In addition to essential workers, Sharma said international students without provincial health cards and people aged 65 and above who had been eligible for some time also attended the clinic.
It took place ahead of the latest effort to speed up Ontario’s broader vaccination program, which is set to begin including all residents 30 and older later this week.
Monday will also see the province revert back to a per capita model of vaccine allocation after diverting half its supply to hot spots with high daily case counts over the past two weeks.
The province announced last week that it aims to have all willing adults in Ontario fully immunized with two doses by Sept. 22. All adult residents should be eligible to register for their first jab by the end of May.
Vaccine expansion efforts were already reaching new heights over the weekend, according to Health Minister Christine Elliott, who reported the province had delivered more than seven million doses as of Sunday morning. More than 139,000 of those were injected on Saturday alone, she added.
The province also reported 2,199 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, including 30 more virus-related deaths. Those figures were based on 33,142 tests administered over the previous 24 hours.
There were 1,292 COVID-19 patients in Ontario hospitals as of Sunday morning, a decline of 254 from the day before.
Of those patients, 714 were in intensive care and 509 were on ventilators.
Travellers in England were packing their bags, bartenders were polishing their glasses and performers were warming up as Britain prepared Sunday for a major step out of lockdown – but with clouds of worry on the horizon.
Excitement at the reopening of travel and hospitality vied with anxiety that a more contagious virus variant first found in India is spreading fast and could delay further plans to reopen.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged Britons to “take this next step with a heavy dose of caution.”
“We are keeping the spread of the variant first identified in India under close observation and taking swift action where infection rates are rising,” he said. “I urge everyone to be cautious and take responsibility when enjoying new freedoms today in order to keep the virus at bay.”
Cases of the variant have more than doubled in a week in the U.K., defying a sharp nationwide downward trend in infections and deaths won by hard-earned months of restrictions and a rapid vaccination campaign. A surge testing and stepped-up vaccination effort was being conducted in the northern England areas hardest hit by that variant.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the variant, formally known as B.1.617.2, is more transmissible than the U.K.’s main strain and “it is likely it will become the dominant variant.”
On Monday, people in England will be able to eat a restaurant meal indoors, drink inside a pub, go to a museum, hug friends and visit one another’s homes for the first time in months. A ban on overseas holidays is also being lifted, with travel now possible to a short list of countries with low infection rates. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are following similar but slightly different reopening paths.
Patrick Dardis, chief executive of brewery and pub chain Young’s, said the indoor opening – which follows the reopening of outdoor patios and beer gardens last month – is “a big step back on to the path to normality.”
“The weather has been pretty dire, and people are hardy, but we really needed this next step to come,” he said.
But hospitality and entertainment venues say they won’t be able to make money until they can open at full capacity. That’s due to happen June 21, the date set by the government for lifting its remaining COVID-19 restrictions, including social distancing and mask-wearing rules.
Johnson has said if the new variant causes a big surge in cases, it could scupper that plan.
Britain has recorded almost 128,000 coronavirus deaths, the highest reported toll in Europe. But new infections have plummeted to an average of around 2,000 a day, compared with nearly 70,000 a day during the winter peak, and deaths have fallen to single figures a day.
Almost 70% of British adults have received a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and more than 38% have had both doses.
Health officials, backed by the army, are carrying out surge testing in Bolton and Blackburn in northwest England, where cases of the new variant are clustered. Pop-up vaccination sites have been set up to speed the inoculation drive, with authorities aiming to inoculate all members of multi-generational households to stop the variant spreading within families.
Across the country, the government is shortening the gap between doses for people over 50 from 12 to eight weeks in a bid to give them more protection.
Hancock said scientists had a “high degree of confidence” that current vaccines work against the Indian-identified variant.
Critics of Britain’s Conservative government say lax border rules allowed the new variant to enter the country. They accuse the government of delaying a ban on visitors from India, which is experiencing a devastating coronavirus outbreak, because it is seeking a trade deal with the vast country.
India was added to the U.K.’s high-risk “red list” on April 23, weeks after neighbors Pakistan and Bangladesh.
“We shouldn’t be in this situation,” said opposition Labour Party lawmaker Yvette Cooper. “This was not inevitable.”
The government denies that its health policies were influenced by political or trade considerations.
Mark Walport, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said Britain was at a “perilous moment,” and people should be cautious with their new freedoms.
“My advice is that just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should,” he told Sky News. “As far as possible, socialize outside, maintain social distancing. If you’re going to hug, hug cautiously.”
Graduation has been the topic of conversation between 17-year-old Anoosha Keshav and her friends for months.
After their last two years of high school were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mississauga, Ont., teen and her peers crave a little normalcy to mark the end of this stage in their lives– not another pared down, online-only event.
“It comes up in almost every conversation,” she said. “The fact that it’s going to be a pre-recorded video you’ll have to watch, it’s really disappointing. It’s not motivational, you know, because we’re almost there at the end, and it’s really sad that this is how our graduation is going to be.”
So Keshav has come up with an alternative. She’s calling on the Ontario government to allow COVID-safe outdoor ceremonies, complete with physical distancing and personal protective equipment.
“This is something really important for us,” she said. “We do want to celebrate this milestone properly, especially considering that we have spent the entirety of our senior year in a pandemic and half of our junior year, as well.”
Keshav is not alone in her desire for an outdoor ceremony.
An online petition she started less than a week ago had garnered more than 9,700 signatures by Sunday morning. They come from people identifying themselves as students, teachers and parents.
“I would like to have at least one memorable Grade 12 experience,” one signatory wrote.
“This year has been full of disappointments, let’s not end on one,” said another.
For 18-year-old Nathalia Aranda of St. George, Ont., losing an in-person graduation would mean missing out on long-awaited — and hard-earned — recognition.
“When you leave high school, you’re not just leaving with a diploma, you’re leaving with other characteristics like honor roll, scholarships, and your future goals are announced. And I believe that it’s really significant for us students to get that recognition for all we’ve worked for,” said Aranda, who signed the petition on Saturday.
She said she’s been planning for her graduation ceremony since Grade 9, and had hoped to use it to pay tribute to her roots after moving from Colombia when she was younger.
“I really wanted to walk across the stage and hold up my flag just to show anyone can make it here,” she said. “And that’s really what my plan was. And now I kind of can’t do that because it is on Zoom.”
The push for in-person graduation ceremonies comes as Ontario continues to tackle the pandemic’s third wave, with the province extending a stay-at-home order until at least June 2.
Students across Ontario have been learning remotely for more than a month and it’s not yet clear whether they’ll return to the physical classroom before summer break begins, even as vaccination efforts ramp up.
The province is aiming to open up vaccination appointments to everyone 18 and up by the week of May 24, and it’s hoping to start vaccinating teens between the ages of 12 and 17 in June.
But it remains to be seen how many youth will receive their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot — the only one approved for use in minors — in time for grad ceremonies, which typically happen towards the end of June.
A spokeswoman for Education Minister Stephen Lecce said he’s looking into the feasibility of outdoor ceremonies.
“Ontario students deserve this positive conclusion to their academic journey, safely,” Caitlin Clark said in an email. “We are actively working with the Chief Medical Officer of Health on this in order to preserve these opportunities to proudly recognize the incredible success and achievement of our students.”
But some school boards say that even if the province gives the green light, it may be too late to organize an in-person ceremony.
The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, for instance, said organizing such events and keeping them safe present significant hurdles.
“If the stay-at-home order is ended, there would very likely be outdoor gathering restrictions in place that limit numbers. We have graduating classes that would be over 400 students,” Bruce Campbell said in an email, adding that Peel is among the biggest COVID-19 hot spots in the country.
“(The board) has made the decision, in consultation with our public health units, to go with virtual graduation events again this year.”
The secular board in the same area, the Peel District School Board, made the same choice.
It’s been planning for virtual celebrations since February, using last year’s online-only ceremony as a template. That event featured recorded performances from students and alumni and was viewed by more than 10,000 people.
Keshav, however, feels there’s a distinct difference between this year and last.
“The class of 2020, its graduation was just a couple months after the pandemic started,” she said. “Now it’s been over a year, and since then, we’ve learned a lot. Organizers know how to make events different. There’s a lot of adaptations that can be made. I think doing a graduation now is a lot easier than it would have been last year.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 16, 2021.
Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City flattened three buildings and killed at least 42 people Sunday, Palestinian medics said _ the deadliest single attack in the latest round of violence. Despite the toll and international efforts to broker a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled the fourth war with Gaza’s Hamas rulers would rage on.
In a televised address, Netanyahu said the attacks were continuing at “full-force” and would “take time.“ Israel “wants to levy a heavy price” on the Hamas militant group, he said, flanked by his defense minister and political rival, Benny Gantz, in a show of unity.
Hamas also pressed on, launching rockets from civilian areas in Gaza toward civilian areas in Israel. One slammed into a synagogue in the southern city of Ashkelon hours before evening services for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, Israeli emergency services said. No injuries were reported.
In the Israeli air assault, families were buried under piles of cement rubble and twisted rebar. A yellow canary lay crushed on the ground. Shards of glass and debris covered streets blocks away from the major downtown thoroughfare where the three buildings were hit over the course of five minutes around 1 a.m.
The hostilities have repeatedly escalated over the past week, marking the worst fighting in the territory that is home to 2 million Palestinians since Israel and Hamas’ devastating 2014 war.
“I have not seen this level of destruction through my 14 years of work,” said Samir al-Khatib, an emergency rescue official in Gaza. “Not even in the 2014 war.”
Rescuers furiously dug through the rubble using excavators and bulldozers amid clouds of heavy dust. One shouted, “Can you hear me?” into a hole. Minutes later, first responders pulled a survivor out. The Gaza Health Ministry said 16 women and 10 children were among those killed, with more than 50 people wounded.
Haya Abdelal, 21, who lives in a building next to one that was destroyed, said she was sleeping when the airstrikes sent her fleeing into the street. She accused Israel of not giving its usual warning to residents to leave before launching such an attack.
“We are tired,” she said, “We need a truce. We can’t bear it anymore.”
The Israeli army spokesperson’s office said the strike targeted Hamas “underground military infrastructure.”
As a result of the strike, “the underground facility collapsed, causing the civilian houses’ foundations above them to collapse as well, leading to unintended casualties,” it said.
Among those reported killed was Dr. Ayman Abu Al-Ouf, the head of the internal medicine department at Shifa Hospital and a senior member of the hospital’s coronavirus management committee. Two of Abu Al-Ouf’s teenage children and two other family members were also buried under the rubble.
The death of the 51-year-old physician “was a huge loss at a very sensitive time,” said Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Shifa.
Gaza’s health care system, already gutted by an Israeli and Egyptian blockade imposed in 2007 after Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces, had been struggling with a surge in coronavirus infections even before the latest conflict.
Israel’s airstrikes have leveled a number of Gaza City’s tallest buildings, which Israel alleges contained Hamas military infrastructure. Among them was the building housing The Associated Press Gaza office and those of other media outlets.
Sally Buzbee, the AP’s executive editor, called for an independent investigation into the airstrike that destroyed the AP office on Saturday.
Netanyahu alleged that Hamas military intelligence was operating inside the building and said Sunday any evidence would be shared through intelligence channels. Neither the White House nor the State Department would say if any had been seen.
“It’s a perfectly legitimate target,” Netanyahu told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Asked if he had provided any evidence of Hamas’ presence in the building in a call Saturday with U.S. President Joe Biden, Netanyahu said: “We pass it through our intelligence people.”
Buzbee called for any such evidence to be laid out. “We are in a conflict situation,” Buzbee said. “We do not take sides in that conflict. We heard Israelis say they have evidence; we don’t know what that evidence is.”
Meanwhile, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders asked the International Criminal Court on Sunday to investigate Israel’s bombing of the AP building and others housing media organizations as a possible war crime.
The Paris-based group said in a letter to the court’s chief prosecutor that the offices of 23 international and local media organizations have been destroyed over the past six days. It said the attacks serve “to reduce, if not neutralize, the media’s capacity to inform the public.”
The AP had operated from the building for 15 years, including through three previous wars between Israel and Hamas. The news agency’s cameras, operating from its top floor office and roof terrace, offered 24-hour live shots as militant rockets arched toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes hammered the city and its surroundings.
“We think it’s appropriate at this point for there to be an independent look at what happened yesterday – an independent investigation,” Buzbee said.
The latest outbreak of violence began in east Jerusalem last month, when Palestinians clashed with police in response to Israeli police tactics during Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers. A focus of the clashes was the Al-Aqsa Mosque, a frequent flashpoint located on a hilltop compound revered by both Muslims and Jews.
Hamas began firing rockets toward Jerusalem on Monday, triggering the Israeli assault on Gaza.
At least 188 Palestinians have been killed in hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza, including 55 children and 33 women, with 1,230 people wounded. Eight people in Israel have been killed in some of the 3,100 rocket attacks launched from Gaza, including a 5-year-old boy and a soldier.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad militant group have acknowledged 20 fighters killed in the fighting. Israel says the real number is far higher and has released the names and photos of two dozen alleged operatives it says were “eliminated.”
The assault has displaced some 34,000 Palestinians from their homes, U.N. Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, where eight foreign ministers spoke about the conflict.
Efforts by China, Norway and Tunisia to get the U.N. body to issue a statement, including a call for the cessation of hostilities, have been blocked by the United States, which, according to diplomats, is concerned it could interfere with diplomatic efforts to stop the violence.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al-Malki urged the Security Council to take action to end Israeli attacks. Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, urged the council to condemn Hamas’ “indiscriminate and unprovoked attacks.”
The turmoil has also fueled protests in the occupied West Bank and stoked violence within Israel between its Jewish and Arab citizens, with clashes and vigilante attacks on people and property.
On Sunday, a driver rammed into an Israeli checkpoint in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinian families have been threatened with eviction, injuring six officers before police shot and killed the attacker, Israeli police said.
The violence also sparked pro-Palestinian protests in cities across Europe and the United States.
Israel appears to have stepped up strikes in recent days to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas as international mediators work to end the fighting and stave off an Israeli ground invasion in Gaza.
The Israeli military said it destroyed the home Sunday of Gaza’s top Hamas leader, Yahiyeh Sinwar, in the southern town of Khan Younis. It was the third such attack in the last two days on the homes of senior Hamas leaders, who have gone underground.
Israel on Thursday said it was massing troops along the Gaza frontier and calling up 9,000 reservists ahead of a possible ground invasion of the Hamas-ruled territory, as the two bitter enemies plunged closer to all-out war.
This follows a clarification from Israeli officials that there are “currently” no ground troops inside Gaza, citing an “internal communications” error that informed reporters that Israeli ground troops had entered the territory.
Egyptian mediators rushed to Israel for cease-fire efforts but showed no signs of progress.
The stepped-up fighting came as communal violence in Israel erupted for a fourth night, with Jewish and Arab mobs clashing in the flashpoint town of Lod.
The fighting took place despite a bolstered police presence ordered by the nation’s leaders.
The four-day burst of violence has pushed Israel into uncharted territory — dealing with the most intense fighting it has ever had with Hamas while simultaneously coping with the worst Jewish-Arab violence inside Israel in decades.
A late-night barrage of rocket fire from Lebanon that landed in the sea threatened to open a new front along Israel’s northern border.
Early Friday, the Israeli military said air and ground troops struck Gaza in what appeared to be the heaviest attacks yet.
Masses of red flames illuminated the skies as the deafening blasts from the outskirts of Gaza City jolted people awake.
The strikes were so strong that people inside the city, several kilometers away, could be heard screaming in fear.
“I said we would extract a very heavy price from Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a videotaped statement. “We are doing that, and we will continue to do that with heavy force.”
The fighting broke out late Monday when Hamas, claiming to be the defender of Jerusalem, fired a barrage of long-range rockets toward the city in response to what it said were Israeli provocations.
Israel quickly responded with a series of airstrikes.
Since then, Israel had attacked hundreds of targets in Gaza. The strikes set off scores of earth-shaking explosions across the densely populated territory.
Gaza militants have fired nearly 2,000 rockets into Israel, bringing life in the southern part of the country to a standstill.
Several barrages targeted the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv, some 70 kilometers away.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll has climbed to 103 Palestinians, including 27 children and 11 women, with 530 people wounded.
The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups have confirmed 20 deaths in their ranks, though Israel says that number is much higher.
Seven people have been killed in Israel, including a 6-year-old boy.
In Washington, President Joe Biden said he spoke with Netanyahu about calming the fighting but also backed the Israeli leader by saying “there has not been a significant overreaction.”
He said the goal now is to “get to a point where there is a significant reduction in attacks, particularly rocket attacks that are indiscriminately fired into population centers.”
He called the effort a “a work in progress.”
Thursday’s visit by Egyptian officials marked an important step in the cease-fire efforts.
Egypt often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, and it has been a key player in ending past rounds of fighting.
The officials met first with Hamas leaders in Gaza before holding talks with Israelis in Tel Aviv, two Egyptian intelligence officials said.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Hamas’ exiled leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was also in touch with the Egyptians, the group said.
Israeli firefighters take cover as a siren sounds warning of incoming rockets fired from Gaza strip, at the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon, Tuesday, May 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Despite those efforts, the fighting only intensified. Israeli aircraft pummeled targets in Gaza throughout the day.
And late Thursday, Israel fired tank and artillery shells across the border for the first time, sending scores of terrified residents fleeing for safety.
The airstrikes have destroyed scores of buildings, including three high rises. Israel says the buildings housed Hamas militants or facilities, but civilians were inside as well.
In the northern Gaza Strip, Rafat Tanani, his pregnant wife and four children were killed after an Israeli warplane reduced the building to rubble, residents said.
Sadallah Tanani, a relative, said the family was “wiped out from the population register” without warning. “It was a massacre. My feelings are indescribable,” he said.
Israel has come under heavy international criticism for civilian casualties in Gaza fighting. It says Hamas is responsible for endangering civilians by hiding and launching rockets from civilian areas.
Late Thursday, Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz ordered the mobilization of an additional 9,000 reservists.
The chief military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Hidai Zilberman, said troops were massing along the Gaza border for a possible ground operation.
He said tanks, armored vehicles and artillery were being prepared “for mobilization at any given moment.”
Hamas showed no signs of backing down. It launched several intense barrages of rockets throughout the day and fired its most powerful rocket, the Ayyash, nearly 200 kilometers (120 miles) into southern Israel.
The rocket landed in the open desert but briefly disrupted flight traffic at the southern Ramon airport.
Hamas also launched a drone that Israel said it quickly shot down.
Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida said the group was not afraid of a ground invasion, saying any invasion would be a chance “to increase our catch” of dead or captive soldiers.
Gaza marks deadly Eid al-Fitr as tensions rise during holiday
The fighting cast a pall over the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, normally marked by family gatherings and festive meals. Instead, the streets of Gaza were mostly empty.
Hassan Abu Shaaban tried to lighten the mood by passing out candy to passers-by but acknowledged “there is no atmosphere” for celebrating.
“It is all airstrikes, destruction and devastation,” he said. “May God help everyone.”
The current eruption of violence began a month ago in Jerusalem, where heavy-handed Israeli police tactics during Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers ignited protests and clashes with police.
A focal point of clashes was Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, built on a hilltop compound that is revered by Jews and Muslims.
Israel regards Jerusalem in its entirety as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.
The violent clashes between Arabs and Jews in Israel resulted in scenes not witnessed in more than two decades.
The confrontations erupted again late Thursday. Jewish and Arab mobs battled in the central city of Lod, the epicenter of the troubles, for a fourth consecutive night, despite a state of emergency and heavy police presence.
A Jewish man was shot and seriously wounded, and Israeli media said a second Jewish man was shot.
In the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Jaffa, an Israeli soldier was attacked by a group of Arabs and hospitalized in serious condition.
The fighting deepened a political crisis that has sent Israel careening through four inconclusive elections in just two years.
After March elections, Netanyahu failed to form a government coalition. Now his political rivals have three weeks to try to do so.
Those efforts have been greatly complicated by the fighting. His opponents include a broad range of parties that have little in common.
They would need the support of an Arab party, whose leader has said he cannot negotiate while Israel is fighting in Gaza.
Naftali Bennett, leader of a small right-wing party, was quoted as saying he did not believe an alternate coalition could be formed in the current atmosphere.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid, who is leading the coalition-building efforts, said the country was facing an “existential threat” and urged Bennett to join him to help rescue the country.
Greyhound Canada is permanently cutting all bus routes across the country, shutting down the intercity bus carrier’s operations in Canada after nearly a century of service.
The motor coach company said its remaining routes in Ontario and Quebec will cease permanently on Thursday.
Its American affiliate, Greyhound Lines, Inc., will continue to operate cross-border routes to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver once the border reopens.
The decision comes a year after Greyhound Canada temporarily suspended all service due to a sharp decline in passengers and mounting travel restrictions amid the first wave of COVID-19.
The bus carrier has struggled for years with declining ridership, increasing competition and deregulation.
But the complete loss of so-called farebox revenue during the pandemic has forced the company to permanently cease operations, said Greyhound Canada senior vice-president Stuart Kendrick.
“It’s been a very tough decision and one we’ve taken with a heavy heart,” he told The Canadian Press in an interview. “It’s been a lifeline for many Canadians for more than 90 years. This will have a massive impact.”
The decision is a blow to rural and remote areas that rely on a patchwork of private intercity bus companies for transportation.
The service has long been part of a network linking smaller communities and big cities, offering an affordable and convenient mode of travel for everyone from essential workers and students to the elderly and backpackers.
Yet the rise in car ownership, ride sharing, discount airlines and urban migration has slowly eroded bus ridership, leading Greyhound Canada to gradually reduce the frequency of some services and cut other routes altogether.
“Private carriers are relying on the farebox revenue to maintain these rural routes,” Kendrick said. “When ridership declines, we have a decision to make. We either cut the frequency, exit the rural markets or look for some help.”
Citing declining ridership, deregulation and subsidized competition, Greyhound Canada suspended all operations in Western Canada in 2018.
Yet despite the ongoing challenges with its remaining routes, nothing could have prepared the company for the dramatic 95 per cent drop in passengers at the outset of the pandemic, Kendrick said.
Multiple coach bus companies teamed up and approached the federal and provincial governments for financial aid amid mounting COVID-19 restrictions. But Kendrick said they were referred to existing pandemic supports _ what he called “negligible” for the beleaguered passenger transportation industry _ prompting Greyhound Canada to temporarily suspend all service last May.
“There’s really been a lack of support,” Kendrick said. “We don’t get subsidies.”
Intercity bus carriers are also competing with publicly funded train and transit systems, he said, putting private companies at a disadvantage.
The Ontario government has also promised to deregulate the intercommunity bus industry starting in July, a move that would end Greyhound Canada’s control of certain routes.
“We have had exclusive private bus service on certain corridors,” he said, noting that it provided passengers with safe, frequent and affordable service.
“Greyhound Canada’s tough decision today is going to have a massive impact on customers, especially those riding in the rural network.”
About 260 employees were laid off after Greyhound Canada temporarily ended its passenger service last May. An additional 45 employees will be laid off as a result of the permanent closure, Kendrick said.
The Amalgamated Transit Union lamented the impact of the shutdown on workers and said it will leave thousands of people without transportation options.
“This is devastating news for the thousands of Canadians, especially those from Indigenous and First Nations communities, who have relied on Greyhound for transportation,” said the union’s international president, John Costa, in a statement.
Greyhound plans to sell the bus stations it owns, Kendrick said. As for its leased properties, some of the agreements have expired or have an “out clause,” while it will honour the terms of leases it’s obliged to continue paying, Kendrick said.
The company said tickets for travel after Thursday will be refunded. Customers with a valid travel voucher can also request a refund.
All Ontario and Quebec routes that were temporarily suspended in May 2020 will permanently end as of midnight on Thursday. The routes are:
– Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal
– Toronto-London-Windsor
– Sudbury-Ottawa/Toronto
– Toronto-Kitchener/Guelph/Cambridge
– Toronto-Niagara Falls
– Ottawa-Kingston
Riders across Canada said they were disappointed by Greyhound’s closure, such as 68-year-old Robyn Brown, who used to take the Greyhound bus to travel to Toronto when she lived in Niagara Falls, Ont.
Now living in Vancouver, Brown has also used Greyhound bus routes to visit friends from smaller towns in British Columbia that aren’t serviced by other forms of public transit.
Before the pandemic, she and her husband planned to take a Greyhound from Vancouver to Winnipeg to save on travel fare.
“I’m really sad to see that it’s going, I really am,” she said, adding that she would now fly to Winnipeg or Toronto if she wanted to travel between provinces.
Lisa Baril in Calgary said she has childhood memories of taking a Greyhound bus to visit her grandparents in Kelwood, Man.
As an adult, Baril said she would pick up her grandmother from the Greyhound station in Calgary whenever she’d visit.
“She would say (Greyhound’s closure) is a shame,” said Baril about her late grandmother. “She would probably get frustrated and say `well how am I going to see you guys now?”’Michael Clark, 35, from Waterloo, Ont., said that in college, he used to take the Greyhound bus almost every month to visit his parents in Kingston, Ont., from Ottawa.
“When I moved back to Kingston, I would take day trips into Toronto on weekends by catching the earliest and latest buses in and out,” he said, adding that he found the train too expensive and the Greyhound bus was an easy direct route for him.
He said the closure is “such a horrible loss” for smaller towns in Ontario, where the only way to travel outside the community is by car.
The pandemic has had a debilitating impact on Canada’s struggling intercity bus industry.
Coach bus companies have reduced service frequency or cut routes due to the precipitous drop in ridership, threatening to erode the country’s transportation network.
In January, senators from the Maritimes sent a letter to federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra urging Ottawa to provide financial assistance to Maritime Bus.
The Charlottetown-based company had warned that without funding, it would have to cut routes.
The senators said that with Via Rail service suspended and airlines slashing flights to the region, the bus was needed for essential travel, such as transporting blood products or patients to health appointments across the region.
In January, the New Brunswick government stepped in to provide $720,000 to the private regional bus operator to maintain service to Edmundston and Campbellton in the province’s north.
