2024-08-23 03:48:29
Eight bodies have been pulled from the Drina River, which runs along the border between Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, after a boat carrying migrants sank overnight while trying to cross the river from Serbia to Bosnia, Radio Free Europe reports.
“Eight people have been found so far. Unfortunately, we are looking for a few more, including a mother and a baby,” Vladan Rankic, leader of the rescue team of the Civil Defense of the Bosnian Republika Srpska, told Radio Free Europe.
Earlier today, Agence France-Presse reported four bodies being taken into care by Serbian police as they were found closer to Serbia.
A boat with illegal migrants trying to cross the Drina River on the border between Serbia and Bosnia capsized last night, Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said this morning, quoted by Tanjug.
“This morning, around 5 o’clock, the border police of the Serbian border town of Lubovija were informed by the border authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as by a local resident, that a boat with illegal migrants who were trying to cross the river from the Serbian side between the Serbian the village of Durlače in the municipality of Lyubovija and the Bosnian town of Orlice in the municipality of Zvornik, overturned during the night,” Dacic announced today.
According to the migrants who reached the shore, there were about 25 people in the boat, and the police and firefighters found 18 people on the shore, three of them children.
Serbia, which borders four EU member states, is one of the main transit countries on the “Balkan route” used by migrants trying to reach the EU, AFP notes.
In June, Serbia signed an agreement with the European border guard agency Frontex aimed at strengthening “operational cooperation” between the EU and the Balkan country. This region is a transit point for migrants who want to reach Western Europe.
According to Frontex, in 2023 almost 100,000 migrants took the “Balkan route”, compared to 144,000 in 2022. Last year, the agency registered more than 20,000 unaccompanied children on this route.
According to Serbian government data, more than one million migrants from Asian and African countries have passed through Serbia since 2015, most of them during the great wave of refugees from the Middle East in 2015.
Local police recorded nearly 10,400 illegal entries into the country from January to June 2024, which is nearly 70 percent less than the same period last year. Among them were Syrian, Afghan, Turkish, Moroccan and Pakistani citizens, writes BTA.