(Eagle News)–Around 400 Filipinos from Lebanon are expected to be repatriated next week following Tuesday’s explosion in Beirut that left over 150 dead.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said an Aug. 16 chartered flight also seeks to bring home the remains of the Filipinos who died in the blast, which also left at least 5000 injured.
The DFA earlier said four Filipinos died in the blast and over 30 were hurt.
“This chartered flight is the most concrete, immediate and timely assistance that the Department of Foreign Affairs could provide given the current situation in Lebanon,” Undersecretary Sarah Lou Y. Arriola said.
Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the DFA said it already began its repatriation activities from Lebanon “to arrest the worsening condition of Filipinos in the country due to economic woes.”
Since December 2019, it said it has repatriated at least 1,508 Filipinos from the country.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Arriola said the DFA “moved to provide assistance to our overseas Filipinos in the country.”
Lebanese authorities have so far taken into custody 16 people as part of a probe into the blast which a Lebanese official initially said was due to “confiscated high explosive material.”
Hezbollah has strongly denied claims it had any stored weapons in the warehouse which supposedly contained the explosive material prior to the explosion.
Lebanon’s president Michel Aoun, for his part, said the probe was also looking at external interference as the cause of the blast, apart from negligence.
