At least six migrants, including a young girl, drowned in the sinking of their boat off the city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon. A strong tension reigns in the city Sunday at the beginning of the evening.
The departures of boats illegally transporting migrants, Syrians, Lebanese or others, have multiplied from Lebanon, a country plunged into an unprecedented economic crisis. But deadly shipwrecks are rare.
The boat left Saturday from the Qalamoun region south of Tripoli, the big city in northern Lebanon, and was carrying around 60 people, according to the authorities. The nationality of the migrants was not specified.
The Lebanese army recovered five bodies of drowned migrants on Sunday and that of a girl on Saturday, bringing the total number of dead to six, according to a provisional report from the national information agency (ANI).
Survivors Wanted
So far, 48 people have been rescued, according to the latest official figures, as the Lebanese navy was still trying to find survivors on Sunday evening.
According to the ANI, demonstrators blocked the highway leading from Tripoli to Akkar with the help of cars in the early evening on Sunday, while high tension reigned in the districts of the city where intermittent shooting was heard.
The head of the Lebanese Navy, Haissam Dannaoui, told a press conference that the boat was only 10 meters long and 3 wide and ‘there were no life jackets on board… ‘.
Two patrols followed the overloaded boat to force it to turn around, he added. ‘Unfortunately, the captain (of the boat) decided to carry out maneuvers to escape’ but he said he hit the navy vessels and was quickly overwhelmed.
“In less than five seconds, the boat was under water,” Dannaoui said, saying life jackets were immediately thrown to the passengers.
Earlier, one of the survivors at the port told AFP it was the patrol vessel that ‘twice rammed’ the migrant boat to force it to turn around, before families of survivors tell him to shut up and take him away.
“The navy is continuing the search to find survivors,” said Ahmad Tamer, director of the port of Tripoli closed by the army.
Calls to demonstrate
“It happened because of the politicians who forced the unemployed Lebanese to leave the country,” one of the relatives of people on board told AFP at the port entrance.
Calls circulated on social networks to demonstrate in front of the house in Tripoli of Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati who declared Monday a day of national mourning.
Unchanged for decades, Lebanon’s political class is accused above all of corruption and incompetence in a country where the currency has lost more than 90% of its value and where the majority of the population now lives below the poverty line.
Legislative elections are in principle scheduled for May 15 in Lebanon, where the pro-Iranian armed movement Hezbollah exercises great influence. “My nephew, who has five children and a pregnant wife, was trying to escape (…) poverty,” said another relative at the entrance to the port.
Two cousins of Nissrine Merheb were also on board the boat along with their children. ‘The people of Tripoli are doomed to die,’ she wrote on Facebook. ‘Even when we try to escape dirty politicians and their corruption…death catches up with us’.
More and more crossings
In a message posted on Twitter, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, Najat Rochdi, called for an end to these repeated tragedies. ‘It’s horrible to see that deprivation still drives people on a perilous journey across the seas,’ she said.
According to the UN, at least 1,570 people, including 186 Lebanese, left or attempted to leave Lebanon illegally by sea between January and November 2021, most hoping to reach the island of Cyprus, a member of the European Union and located some 175 kilometers away. A figure up from 270 passengers, including 40 Lebanese, in 2019.
Most of the migrants are Syrian refugees who fled their country at war, but more and more Lebanese are trying to cross.
/ATS