Conflict Incident Report

The Internal Security Forces said Wednesday they have apprehended 44 people of different nationalities as they attempted to flee toward Germany from the northern port of Tripoli. The refugees included 12 Palestinian men displaced from Syria, 17 Palestinian men living in Lebanon, three Palestinian women from Lebanon, a Palestinian woman displaced from Syria, four Ethiopian women, a Bangladeshi, two Syrian men, and four Palestinian children, the ISF said in a statement. Security sources told The Daily Star that the Palestinian men displaced from Syria were originally from the Yarmouk camp next to Damascus, and claimed that most of them staunchly oppose the Syrian government. Most had settled in the refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in Sidon after arriving in Lebanon. The refugees were on a bus when they were arrested, waiting for the owner of the vessel to help them aboard, the sources said. The ISF then arrived on the scene and arrested everyone, including the owner of the boat. Security sources claim that this was not a rare incident but was rather occurring on a semi-regular basis. “The only reason they announced today’s operation was because of the large number of refugees captured,” the source told The Daily Star. The source also claimed that such incidents are not exclusive to Tripoli. Smuggling operations also take place in the coastal towns of Chekka and Enfeh. Other refugees board boats posing as fisherman. After making their way out to sea they are met by smugglers with larger boats, aboard which they try to make their way to various European havens, the sources said. The ISF and General Security have recorded several cases of boats ferrying asylum-seekers from Tripoli’s fishing port over the past two months. The vessels used for the journey are often quite small, but carry up to a hundred passengers. Many Syrian and Palestinian refugees have fled to Turkey in hopes of crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece, using it as a portal to reach the rest of Europe and seek asylum. Between 2011 and 2015 some 428,735 refugees have applied for asylum in Europe. Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has taken in the EU’s highest number of refugees amid the biggest migrant crisis since World War II. The total number is expected to reach 800,000 this year – four times last year’s total – at a cost of about 10 billion euros ($11 billion) to the German state.