Lebanon migrant tragedy: Death toll hits 89

Twelve more bodies were recovered yesterday 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 such shipwrecks. Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), called it 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 people still missing since the boat sank on Thursday. Lebanon's army yesterday said that it arrested a Lebanese man who "admitted to organising the recent smuggling operation from Lebanon to Italy by sea". Lebanon, a country which hosts more than a million refugees from Syria's civil war, has since 2019 been mired 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 kilometres (30 miles) north of Tripoli in Lebanon, from where the migrants set sail.