BELGRADE: Serbian police have detained thousands of migrants in two weeks of daily raids in northern and eastern areas of the Balkan country, as part of a nationwide operation launched two weeks ago after a shootout in which three migrants died.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Serbian Ministry of Interior said that since Oct 27 they had rounded up some 4,500 migrants in the municipalities of Subotica, Sombor and Kikinda near the Hungarian border in the north and near the town of Pirot in the southeast, near the border with Bulgaria and transferred them to government-controlled camps.

It said that eight smugglers and 119 people have been arrested on charges including human trafficking and illegal possession of weapons and drugs.

The police also seized five assault rifles, five handguns, over 1,500 rounds of various calibers, hundreds of foreign passports and searched more than 81,000 cars and over 300 homes.

“The Ministry of Internal Affairs will persevere until the problem of irregular migration is solved and the human smuggling chain is severed,” the statement said.

The ministry did not say where the migrants had come from but most of those using the Balkan route into the EU, are typically from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and north Africa.

The route runs via Turkiye, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Serbia. Many migrants cross borders with the help of elaborate networks of smugglers who are sometimes armed, and shootouts between criminal groups are frequent.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2023