DAMASCUS: Twelve more bodies were recovered on Saturday, Sep 24 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 shipwrecks.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR said it was 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 missing since the boat sank on Thursday.
There are 89 victims, while 14 people are being treated at Al-Basel Hospital, two of whom are in intensive care, Syria's official news agency SANA reported, who said he was quoting Iskandar Ammar, a hospital official.
Lebanon's army said Saturday it had arrested a Lebanese man who admitted to organising a smuggled operation from Lebanon to Italy by sea Lebanon, a country that hosts more than a million refugees from Syria's civil war, and has been embroiled 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 launchpad for illegal migration, with its own citizens joining Syrian and Palestinian refugees clamouring 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 50 km north of Tripoli in Lebanon, from where the migrants set sail.
The UN said that the majority of those on board were Lebanese and Syrians and Palestinians and included both children and the elderly.
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, where 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 weptied a makeshift coffin through the streets.
Lebanon has seen a rise in the number of migrants crossing its shores in order to reach Europe since 2020.
UNICEF said it 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, education and welfare, according to UNICEF.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said: "No one gets on these death boats lightly."
People are risking their lives in search of dignity because they are taking these perilous decisions. Lazzarini said more needed to be done to address the sense of hopelessness in Lebanon and throughout the region, including among Palestine refugees Antonio Vitorino, head of the International Organization for Migration IOM, which said people looking for safety should not be forced to take such dangerous and often deadly migration journeys. Most boats setting off from Lebanon head for a member of the European Union, Cyprus, an island about 175 kilometres 110 miles to the west.