Syrian authorities have found the bodies of 34 drowned migrants off the port city of Tartous (northwest), the Syrian health ministry said on Thursday (September 22nd). Twenty people have been hospitalized and searches are 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 d’une cinquantaine de kilomètres de Tartous]in northern Lebanon, a few days ago »said earlier in the day the Director General of Syrian Ports, Samer Kbrasli, in a statement issued by the Ministry of Transport. “Oxygen support 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 in makeshift boats towards European countries, in particular 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 1,500 people have illegally left or attempted to leave Lebanon by sea since 2020.
On September 13, the Turkish Coast Guard announced the death of six migrants, including two infants, and rescued seventy-three people who were trying to reach Europe, off the province of Mugla (South-West). Their nationality was not immediately mentioned, but they would have embarked from the Lebanese port of Tripoli to try to reach Italy, reported the coastguards, citing the testimony of people rescued.