At least 77 migrants dead after boat from Lebanon sinks off Syria

At least 77 migrants drowned when a boat they boarded in Lebanon sank off Syria's coast, Syria's health minister said Friday, in one of the deadliest such shipwrecks in the eastern Mediterranean.

Lebanon, which since 2019 has been mired in a financial crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern times, has become a launchpad for illegal migration, with its own citizens joining Syrian and Palestinian refugees clamoring to leave their homeland.

Around 150 people, mostly Lebanese and Syrians, were on board the small boat that went down Thursday off the Syrian city of Tartus.