The migrant boat sunk off the Syrian coast on Thursday killed 94 people. Syrian state television announced on Saturday that the death toll has risen further after more bodies washed ashore along the country’s coast.
Earlier it became clear that rescuers had already recovered 86 bodies. At least 20 people have been rescued and are in hospitals in Syria. There may have been a total of 120 to 150 people on the vessel, survivors said.
According to local media, the ship left Tripoli, not far from the Syrian border, on Tuesday morning for Cyprus. According to the UN, people of different nationalities were on board, including many Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians. Reuters news agency reports that it is the deadliest drama ever involving a migrant boat from Lebanon.
The boat is said to have sunk 45 kilometers north of the Syrian island of Arwad. How that could have happened is not clear. The first bodies and survivors were picked up by Syrian fishermen, who alerted authorities in the Syrian port of Tartus.
Lebanon has recently seen a spike in emigration due to a deep economic crisis and, in addition, a large number of Syrian refugees have settled in tiny Lebanon over the past decade. The number of people leaving or attempting to leave Lebanon by sea nearly doubled in 2021 from 2020, according to the UN refugee agency, and rose again by more than 70 percent in 2022 compared to the same period last year.
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