Belgrade: Serbian authorities arrested three men on suspicion of people trafficking after 77 migrants were found hidden in cargo vehicles, the defence ministry said yesterday. Serbia was a pinchpoint for migrant flows last year, when hundreds of thousands of people fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and Asia journeyed up through the Balkans to reach the European Union.
That route was effectively closed off in March, but since then Serbian authorities estimate a further 110,000 migrants have passed through the country, many crossing its now sealed border with Hungary illegally. Yesterday, members of a military and police task force detained two men in central Serbia attempting to smuggle 36 migrants from Afghanistan and Mali in the back of a large van, the ministry said.
In a separate incident, 41 migrants were found in a truck with German registration plates.
