Alleged Syrian people smugglers arrested by State Security. (Credit NNA)
BEIRUT — State Security announced in a statement on Friday that they had arrested five Syrian people smugglers in Nabatieh who had been facilitating border crossings between Lebanon and Syria via the remote Wadi Khaled region.
A number of informal migrants entering Lebanon through this network were transported to the Cola neighborhood, in the south of Beirut and then to Nabatieh, the agency explained.
There are numerous smuggling networks operating between Lebanon and Syria.
The porous border and the absence of effective state authority in certain regions facilitate various forms of smuggling and trafficking, from drugs to human beings.
On Thursday, the Lebanese Army announced that they had turned back around 1,200 Syrian migrants attempting to enter Lebanon informally, amid a wave of similar announcements in recent weeks.
Lebanon has the highest per capita ratio of refugees in the world, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), with nearly two million Syrian citizens on its soil according to official estimates. Nearly 830,000 of them are registered refugees with the UN.