DAMASCUS —
Syrian authorities have recovered 100 bodies from
a Lebanese migrant boat that sank off Syria last week, state media reported
about one of the deadliest recent shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean.
اضافة اعلان
The first bodies were found last Thursday and only
20 people were rescued out of as many as 150 passengers.
“The number of victims of the
Lebanese boat has
reached 100 people so far after another body was recovered from the sea,” Syria’s
official news agency SANA on Monday quoted the head of Syrian ports Samer
Kbrasli as saying.
All survivors have been discharged from hospital,
SANA said.
Nearly three years of deep economic crisis have
turned Lebanon into a launchpad for migrants, with its own citizens joining
Syrian and Palestinian refugees desperate to flee rising poverty via dangerous
sea voyages.
Those aboard the ship that sailed from Lebanon’s
impoverished northern city of Tripoli were mostly Lebanese, Syrians and
Palestinians, and included children and elderly people, the United Nations
said.
Lebanon hosts more than a million refugees from
Syria’s civil war and has been mired in a financial and economic crisis branded
by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern times.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Filippo Grandi described the shipwreck as a “heart-wrenching tragedy”.
Since 2020, Lebanon has seen a spike in the number
of migrants attempting the perilous crossing in jam-packed boats to reach
Europe.
The UN children’s agency
UNICEF said that 10
children appeared to be “among those who lost their lives”, adding that “years
of political instability and economic crisis in Lebanon have pushed many
children and families into poverty”.
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