Canadians stranded in Middle East seek help to get home amid escalating conflict

Canadians stranded by flight cancellations in the Middle East since U.S. attacks on Iran sparked an escalating conflict say they now face an indefinite wait, with one traveller calling on the government to do more to help them get home.

Devin Ramoutar said he arrived in Dubai with his parents and sister on Thursday for a short vacation and they were supposed to head back home on Monday, but their flight has been cancelled six times since American airstrikes on Iran began Saturday.

“When we heard the news, I booked an emergency flight out that was immediately cancelled and then the original flight has been bounced five times now,” the 27-year-old Toronto resident said in a phone interview Wednesday.

“Thankfully we’re together because that’s keeping us pretty mentally healthy.”

Ramoutar said he contacted the Canadian government immediately after the war started and only heard back after about 48 hours via email with general information about how to leave the United Arab Emirates through land border crossings with Saudi Arabia and Oman.

“Basically, there’s not much help or much guidance, none at all actually, and that’s the only sort of response we’ve received, not a single person has reached out to us after that,” he said. “We need verified information to make an informed decision.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Wednesday that the federal government has secured “a limited number of seats” on commercial flights out of Lebanon for Canadians trying to flee the region, but is not offering assisted departures.

“Canadians in the region should prepare departure plans that do not rely solely on government of Canada assistance,” Anand told reporters in Ottawa.

“Global Affairs Canada is not currently offering assisted departures, but we are in touch with our partners to identify potential options.”

Some commercial flight options are also currently available elsewhere in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Oman, but airspace in others, including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, is closed. Israel’s ministry of tourism is operating buses to the border with Egypt and Anand said Global Affairs is communicating these options to people registered in the region.

Anand said 103,000 people have registered with Global Affairs Canada in the Middle East and Gulf region.

Ramoutar said his family is not receiving any support from the Canadian Embassy and they’ve had to extend their Airbnb stay in Dubai while waiting to find a flight back to Canada.

“Obviously, we’re the byproduct of this war, we’re not involved, so a sense of urgency, I think, is what’s needed now to get us out because, the situation is indefinite,” he said.

“Delay is not the word. At this point, it’s just indefinite, so we can’t continue to be here as the uncertainty prevails.”

Simon Marcotte arrived in Dubai with his fiancée and her child last month on a work trip and he said they are considering their options now as the vast majority of flights out of the city have been cancelled.

The 33-year-old from Quebec City said his family had to shelter in their building’s basement earlier this week.

“We received an alert on our phone, like Amber Alerts, but it was saying ‘a missile may be incoming, please find shelter.’ We panicked a little bit,” he said in an interview.

“I got some dry food and water, and we went to the basement and to the parking where we found some other families and old people sleeping there. We stayed about three hours in the basement, before we decided to go back because things look more calm.”

Marcotte, who works in marketing, said he continued to hear jets flying by and explosions from time to time.

“Most of the incidents that happened here were a drone that has been taken down,” he said.

Marcotte said he received information from the Canadian government on how to leave via land border crossings and he finds that helpful in case he and his fiancée decide to head to Oman.

Meanwhile, 16 students and one faculty member from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., are stuck in Doha, Qatar following a biology field trip to Sri Lanka.

The school said in a statement Tuesday that the group left on Feb. 15 and was scheduled to return on Feb. 28 with a connecting flight in Doha.

Stephen Lougheed, a professor on the trip, said their Qatar Airways flight back was forced to return to Doha following the airspace closure.

“The captain came on the intercom and indicated that we were returning to Doha with not a lot of information as to what was happening,” Lougheed said. “But I think there was some notion that there was a conflict that had arisen.”

Lougheed said the group spent hours in the airport among hundreds of other travellers and they slept on the ground in a lounge. They were given food and hotel vouchers, he added.

He said there’s no timeline for their return to Canada, but they’ve been in close contact with the university and the Canadian Embassy in Qatar. While the students are under stress, they’ve been “remarkably resilient,” he said.

Canadians are being advised to avoid all travel to a number of countries in the region as the conflict widens. The war erupted as the United States and Israel launched major strikes on Iran, and Iran retaliated with strikes in various parts of the region.

Lebanon was dragged early Monday into the war when Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into northern Israel, triggering Israeli retaliatory airstrikes on different parts of the country. Those retaliatory strikes have killed dozens of people and displaced tens of thousands from southern Lebanon, the eastern Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Israeli authorities and Hezbollah had agreed to a ceasefire in late 2024 after the Iranian-backed militant group started firing at Israel in response to the war in Gaza.

— With files from Rianna Lim and The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 4, 2026.