Lebanese authorities detained 49 Syrian and Palestinian refugees from Syria at the Beirut airport Saturday morning for allegedly trying to depart the country illegally, a General Security statement said.
The agency said the men and women were trying to travel with forged documents to an unidentified Arab country.
They were referred to the state prosecutor's office and will be further interrogated to reveal the “network of individuals forging travel documents, and whoever is involved in the case,” it added.
The agency appealed to foreign and Arab citizens in Lebanon, particularly Syrian and Palestinian refugees, to refrain from violating residency regulations or attempting to forge travel documents to move to other country.
The number of Syrian refugees fleeing into Lebanon has skyrocketed in the past year with more than one million registered refugees. Thousands of Palestinian refugees from Syria have also sought refuge Lebanon as the war rages over the border.
Lebanon has said that it can no longer handle the overwhelming number of refugees and that it was struggling to provide them with needed aid.
