BEIRUT: The Lebanese military said Tuesday it had rescued over 20 people off the country’s northern coast after a boat trying to smuggle them out broke down. A military statement said the naval forces, along with the civil defense agency and the Red Cross, rescued “22 people during an attempt to smuggle them illegally aboard a boat after it broke down off the coast of Tripoli,” the largest city in the north. “Work is ongoing to rescue the remaining passengers,” it said, without specifying how many people had been aboard. The official National News Agency had earlier reported that more than 20 passengers were Syrians and the rest were Lebanese. Migrants and asylum seekers leaving Lebanon by boat seek a better life in Europe, often heading to the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, less than 200 kilometers (125 miles) away. Syria was devastated by 13 years of civil war, between 2011 and 2024, in which more than half a million people were killed and around half the population displaced. Despite the return of relative stability following the overthrow of Bashar Assad in late 2024, around 1.12 million Syrians remain refugees in Lebanon, according to estimates by the UN’s refugee agency. The UNHCR estimates that around 400,000 Syrians returned to their country from Lebanon in 2025. In Lebanon, the collapse of the economy in late 2019 and deteriorating living conditions have also driven many Lebanese to choose irregular migration. In recent years, the Lebanese army has announced that it foiled several attempts to smuggle irregular migrants by sea.