![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://uknews.evprotec.com/lebanon-survivors-recall-harrowing-migrant-boat-disaster/&media=https://uknews.evprotec.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/127603825_wissamindex.jpg&description=Image source, EPA-EFEImage caption, More than 100 people drowned in September when the unsafe boat they had been forced onto sank"The minute we arrived at the boat the captain realised we would not make it. He shouted: 'Take us back! You are sending us to our death!'" Hamida, 32, recounts the last minutes before the boat, carrying more than 150 migrants, sank in the Mediterranean. "Captain Usama was threatened with a gun," she says. "Youssef, the brother of the main smuggler Bilal Dieb, pulled a gun and said: 'We will start with your kids if you don't get on the boat!'"On a dark night in September, some 300 to 400 people were cramped into a one-story building in a fenced-off farmyard near Tripoli, in the north of Lebanon, close to the Syrian border. They had all paid smugglers thousands of dollars to board a boat to take them to Europe. Within two days, more than 100 of them would be dead. Hamida Misto, her husband, their three children, and her deaf father were among the passengers. They had spent six days and nights at the farm, where the people smugglers had told them to wait, before boarding a boat heading to Italy. They were confident about the journey as a group before them had made it to Italy. Abu Firas, the broker who kept Hamida's money, had showed them photos of the vessel that would carry them across the sea. It had looked new and in good shape. The smugglers called out people's names and took them on a truck to the shore, where they were put on small fishing boats that would take them from the beach to the larger vessel. Hamida's family were the last to reach the boat, along with the captain who was supposed to sail them to their new life in Italy. But instead, they were taken to a "death boat". Lebanon's economy collapsed in 2019 amid what the World Bank has described as one of the worst financial crises the world has seen since the 19th Century. Most of the country's population struggles with basic needs. Many Lebanese, as well as Syrian and Palestini){kind=link}
“The minute we arrived at the boat the captain realised we would not make it. He shouted: ‘Take us back! You are sending us to our death!'”
Hamida, 32, recounts the last minutes before the boat, carrying more than 150 migrants, sank in the Mediterranean.
“Captain Usama was threatened with a gun,” she says. “Youssef, the brother of the main smuggler Bilal Dieb, pulled a gun and said: ‘We will start with your kids if you don’t get on the boat!'”
On a dark night in September, some 300 to 400 people were cramped into a one-story building in a fenced-off farmyard near Tripoli, in the north of Lebanon, close to the Syrian border. They had all paid smugglers thousands of dollars to board a boat to take them to Europe. Within two days, more than 100 of them would be dead.
Hamida Misto, her husband, their three children, and her deaf father were among the passengers. They had spent six days and nights at the farm, where the people smugglers had told them to wait, before boarding a boat heading to Italy.