Syrian authorities have recovered 100 bodies from a Lebanese migrant boat that sank off Syria last week, Syrian state media reported about one of the deadliest recent shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean.
The first bodies were found last Thursday and only 20 people were rescued out of as many as 150 passengers.
“The number of victims of the Lebanese boat has reached 100 people so far after another body was recovered from the sea,” Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted the head of Syrian ports Samer Kbrasli as saying.
All survivors have been discharged from the hospital, SANA said.
The Lebanese Army said that it had arrested earlier a Lebanese national who admitted to organizing the recent smuggling operation from Lebanon to Italy by sea.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi described the shipwreck as a “heart-wrenching tragedy.”
The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said that 10 children appeared to be “among those who lost their lives,” adding that “years of political instability and economic crisis in Lebanon have pushed many children and families into poverty.”
