Palestinian-Canadians worry for relatives as offensive in Gaza ramps up

MONTREAL - Moayed Salim expected his father to come home to Canada at the end of the month in time for the birth of his son. Instead, the London, Ont. resident said his 66-year-old father is stuck in Gaza and there's no way to know if he is alive or dead amid a telephone and internet blackout. “It's devastating, it's hard to focus on anything,” Salim said in an interview Saturday. “My wife, she's almost in labor, her entire family's in Gaza, so you can imagine the amount of emotion, the pain, the confusion.” Israel launched an expanded ground operation in the enclave on Saturday, while stepped-up bombardments knocked out telecom services to most of the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million residents and created a near-blackout of information in the area. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address to the nation on Saturday evening saying the latest actions marked a new phase in the country's war with Hamas, the governing body in Gaza that was behind a brutal Oct. 7 incursion int