Some 86 Syrians were arrested in Aabde in northern Lebanon as they were preparing to leave Lebanon clandestinely by sea, the Lebanese army announced on Friday.

According to the army statement, the migrants wanted to go to Italy. The boat they were planning to use was seized by the armed forces.

This intervention by law enforcement comes in a regional context of an unprecedented migration crisis. Lebanon, which has hosted more than a million and a half displaced Syrian refugees since the start of the civil war in their country in 2011, now also finds itself in the midst of a crisis, pushing some of these refugees to want to leave the country. In May 2024, and after a large influx of Syrian refugees coming from Lebanon to Cyprus and Italy illegally, the European Union proposed a plan of one billion euros with a large part of the amount dedicated to helping the Lebanese state to bend the migratory flow.

This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.