DAMASCUS — Twelve more bodies were recovered Saturday after a boat carrying migrants
from
Lebanon sunk off Syria’s coast, raising the overall toll to 89, Syrian
state media said, in one of the eastern Mediterranean’s deadliest such
shipwrecks.
اضافة اعلان
UNHCR chief
Filippo Grandi called it a “heart-wrenching tragedy”.
At least 14
people rescued were recovering in hospitals in
Syria while six others were
discharged, as search efforts continued, with several people still missing
since the boat sank on Thursday.
“There are 89
victims, while 14 people are receiving treatment at Al-Basel Hospital, two of
whom are in intensive care,” Syria’s official news agency SANA reported,
quoting Iskandar Ammar, a hospital official.
Lebanon’s army
said Saturday that it arrested a Lebanese man who “admitted to organizing the
recent smuggling operation from Lebanon to Italy by sea”.
Lebanon, a
country which hosts more than a million refugees from Syria’s civil war, has
since 2019 been mired in a financial crisis branded by the World Bank as one of
the worst in modern times.
Nearly three
years of economic collapse have turned the country into a launch pad for
illegal migration, with its own citizens joining Syrian and Palestinian
refugees clamoring to leave through dangerous sea routes.
As many as 150
people were on board the small boat that sank off the Syrian port of Tartus,
some 50km north of Tripoli in Lebanon, from where the migrants set sail.
Those on board
were mostly
Lebanese, Syrians, and Palestinians, and included both children and
the elderly, the UN said.
Families in
Lebanon held a second day of funerals Saturday after they were handed bodies of
relatives on Friday night through the Arida border crossing with Syria.
In the northern
port city of Tripoli, from which many migrant boats depart, anger mixed with
grief as relatives received news of the death of their loved ones.
Hundreds of
people gathered Saturday for the funeral procession of one of the victims,
pumping fists into the air, as relatives wept carrying a makeshift coffin
through the streets.
‘Death boats’
Since 2020, Lebanon has seen a spike in the number of migrants using its
shores to attempt the perilous crossing in jam-packed boats to reach Europe.
The UN children’s
agency, UNICEF, said they had initial reports that 10 children were “among
those who lost their lives” in the latest disaster.
“Years of
political instability and economic crisis in Lebanon have pushed many children
and families into poverty, affecting their health, welfare and education,”
UNICEF added.
Philippe
Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said: “No one gets on
these death boats lightly. ...
“People are
taking this perilous decisions, risking their lives in search of dignity.”
Lazzarini said
more must be done “to offer a better future and address a sense of hopelessness
in Lebanon and across the region, including among Palestine refugees”.
Antonio Vitorino,
head of the International Organization for Migration, said: “People looking for
safety should not be compelled to take such perilous and often deadly migration
journeys.”
Most of the boats setting
off from Lebanon head for
EU member Cyprus, an island about 175km to the west.
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