An Army Navy patrol, with the support of Civil Defense, “was able to rescue 27 illegal immigrants who were on board a rubber boat while it was sinking off Chekka Beach” in northern Lebanon, according to an army statement.
A military official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, told Agence France-Presse that the migrants are all of Syrian nationality.
Migrants seeking to reach Europe from Lebanon generally head to the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, 175 kilometers away.
On Saturday, the security forces also announced the arrest of a Lebanese human smuggler and 42 Syrians while they were in a car “full of a large number of Syrians.”
The Internal Security Forces said that the driver confessed to planning to smuggle them on a boat to Cyprus. The statement added that the individuals concerned said during interrogation that they paid between 5,000 and 7,000 dollars per person to reach Europe via Cyprus.
A security source told AFP, requesting anonymity, “We tried to stop them on land before they left by sea.”
The army announced Thursday that this week it prevented about 1,000 illegal crossings of the Lebanese border with Syria, which is porous.
The army regularly thwarts smuggling operations by sea and arrests smugglers and those trying to leave.
The Lebanese economy collapsed in late 2019, turning the country into a departure point for migrants, and Lebanese joined Syrians and Palestinian refugees making perilous journeys towards Europe.
The authorities in Beirut say that Lebanon currently hosts about two million Syrians, while more than 800,000 are registered with the United Nations, which is the highest number of refugees in the world relative to the population.
The war in Syria, which broke out in 2011 after the government suppressed peaceful pro-democracy protests, has killed more than half a million people and displaced about half the population.
© 2023 AFP
2023-09-23 13:24:05
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