The news came after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday focusing on the fight against clandestine migration in Lebanon, a country which over the past ten years has added more than a million Syrian refugees to its local population of about four million.

Border control and coordination to increase

Lebanese media report that outgoing prime minister Najib Miqati chaired the meeting, while attendees included Issam Sharafeddin, the country's minister for the displaced; General Elias Baysari, interim head of general security and Muhammad Mustafa, secretary for the high defense council.

"We discussed a mechanism to prevent these people from coming to Lebanon," Sharafeddin said.

"The mechanism," he added, "consists of monitoring the border and coordinating with our Syrian counterparts. We will also ask the military, the intelligence, and security services to coordinate with the local (Lebanese) authorities so that anyone receiving migrants [into their homes, etc] will take responsibility for these actions. We are looking into the possibility to sanction those hosting migrants."

850 Syrian migrants stopped at the border

The meeting was called a day after the Lebanese army announced it had pushed back about 850 illegal migrants back to Syria the previous week.

These migrants normally head to the beaches of northern Lebanon, where they often embark on clandestine sea journeys to Italy.

In recent days, the Lebanese army reported having detained about 700 Syrian migrants in the northeastern part of the country who had entered irregularly in the Wadi Khaled region.

According to the army, another 150 Syrians were detained in several different border areas throughout Lebanon.

The financial collapse in Lebanon and the war in Syria, which has now been underway for over 12 years, are pushing an ever larger number of people to risk their lives via sea.