Syrian and Palestinian refugees as well as Lebanese have attempted in recent months to cross the Mediterranean aboard makeshift boats.
Le Monde with AFP
The Syrian authorities found the bodies of thirty-four migrants who died off the tarty city of Tartous (northwest), said the Syrian Ministry of Health, Thursday, September 22. Twenty people have been hospitalized and research is still underway, at sea and on the coast, to find survivors, according to an official government statement.
“According to survivors, the boat left the port of Minieh [distant about fifty kilometers from Tartous], in northern Lebanon a few days ago,” said the day earlier on the day Director General of Syrian ports, Samer Kbrasli, in a statement published by the Ministry of Transport. “Oxygen assistance is provided to most of the victims and some of them have been transferred to intensive care,” added the same source, stressing that all caregivers in the region were mobilized.
Due to the serious economic crisis in which Lebanon is plunged, Syrian and Palestinian refugees, as well as Lebanese have tried in recent months to cross the Mediterranean aboard makeshift boats towards European countries, especially The island of Cyprus, located 175 kilometers from the Lebanese coast.
In April, the sinking of an overloaded migrant boat, chased by the Lebanese navy off Tripoli (North), had killed six people and caused great anger in the country. According to the United Nations, at least thirty-eight boats carrying more than one thousand five hundred people have left or attempted to leave Lebanon by sea since 2020.
On September 13, the Turkish coast guards announced the death of six migrants, including two infants, and rescued sixty-three people who were trying to win Europe, off the province of Mugla (southwest) . Their nationality was not immediately mentioned, but they would have embarked on the Lebanese port of Tripoli to try to win Italy, the coast guard reported by citing the testimony of rescued people.