Survivors of Indonesian Boat Tragedy Return to Lebanon Local Editor Lebanese survivors of a ferry which sank off Indonesia carrying asylum seekers last week arrived in Beirut on Sunday. Families of the survivors as well as officials swarmed Rafiq Hariri International Airport to receive the returnees. “I traveled with my wife and three children and today I return all alone,” one of the survivors told reporters at airport after landing in Beirut on board an Emirates Airline flight via Dubai. For his part, caretaker Foreign Affairs Minister Adnan Mansour told reporters that the Lebanese government “didn’t fall short at any point regarding this issue.” “The Lebanese embassy has been the quickest [to react] and the most active among other embassies, as confirmed by the Indonesian authorities.” Earlier on Friday, an official delegation to Indonesia finished the necessary legal procedures for the eighteen Lebanese citizens to return to their country. At least 29 Lebanese asylum-seekers went missing after their boat capsized off Indonesia on its way to Australia, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said last week. Twenty-eight people were moved to safety but around 70 - including many children - were unaccounted for after the boat carrying people from Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen went down off the main Indonesian island of Java, police said.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 18:21:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015