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Death Toll from Sunken Lebanon Migrant Boat Rises

A member of the Lebanese Red Cross holds a stretcher as he waits with his colleagues to receive dead bodies after sinking of a migrant boat which according to Lebanese and Syrian officials sank off at Syrian coast after sailing from Lebanon, at the Lebanese-Syrian border crossing in Arida, Lebanon September 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of the Lebanese Red Cross holds a stretcher as he waits with his colleagues to receive dead bodies after sinking of a migrant boat which according to Lebanese and Syrian officials sank off at Syrian coast after sailing from Lebanon, at the Lebanese-Syrian border crossing in Arida, Lebanon September 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
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Death Toll from Sunken Lebanon Migrant Boat Rises

A member of the Lebanese Red Cross holds a stretcher as he waits with his colleagues to receive dead bodies after sinking of a migrant boat which according to Lebanese and Syrian officials sank off at Syrian coast after sailing from Lebanon, at the Lebanese-Syrian border crossing in Arida, Lebanon September 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A member of the Lebanese Red Cross holds a stretcher as he waits with his colleagues to receive dead bodies after sinking of a migrant boat which according to Lebanese and Syrian officials sank off at Syrian coast after sailing from Lebanon, at the Lebanese-Syrian border crossing in Arida, Lebanon September 23, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

The death toll from a migrant boat that sank off the Syrian coast after sailing from Lebanon earlier this week has risen to 94, Syrian state TV said on Saturday.

The Syrian transport ministry has quoted survivors as saying the boat left from Lebanon's northern Minyeh region on Tuesday with between 120 and 150 people onboard, bound for Europe.

There were reported to be around 45 children on the boat, none of whom had survived, Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamiye said Friday.

Hamiye said the boat was "very small" and made of wood, describing such sailings as an almost daily occurrence organized by people who did not care for safety.

The spate of such voyages has been fueled by Lebanon's financial collapse in the last three years - one of the worst ever recorded globally. Poverty rates have sky-rocketed among the population of some 6.5 million.

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WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
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WHO Sends Over 1 Mln Polio Vaccines to Gaza to Protect Children 

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)
Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, look out from a window as they take shelter, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 24, 2024. (Reuters)

The World Health Organization is sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples, its chief said on Friday.

"While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

He wrote that children under five were most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by more than nine months of conflict.

Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Cases of polio have declined by 99% worldwide since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns and efforts continue to eradicate it completely.

Israel's military said on Sunday it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers serving in the Gaza Strip after remnants of the virus were found in test samples in the enclave.

Besides polio, the UN reported last week a widespread increase in cases of Hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza, with sewage spilling into the streets near some camps for displaced people.