OFFICIALS in Serbia said yesterday police had discovered 4,500 “irregular“ migrants in the country in under two weeks, during a nationwide operation launched after a shootout that left three migrants dead.

During raids in border areas in both southeastern and northern Serbia, police in the Balkan country said they found five handguns and automatic rifles and over 1,500 rounds of ammunition.

Eight people were arrested over suspected people smuggling, while nearly 120 were detained for “various criminal offences”, the Internal Ministry said.

“The Internal Ministry will persevere in this fight until the problem of irregular migration is solved and the chain of human trafficking is completely cut,” police said.

The ministry added that 3,000 of the migrants had been transferred to official state-controlled reception centres.

Three people were killed and another wounded in a shooting between migrants near Serbia’s border with Hungary on October 27.

Police subsequently launched a countrywide operation aimed at curbing illegal migration and people smuggling. More than 81,000 cars and 330 locations have been checked, they said.

Serbia lies on the so-called Balkan route, which was used by hundreds of thousands of would-be migrants to the European Union in 2015 and 2016. Many were fleeing war or poverty in Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East.

The route was officially shut down in 2016 but migrants seeking to enter western Europe have continued to use it, albeit in far lower numbers.

In recent months, however, the Balkans has seen a series of clashes between smuggling gangs and migrants, some of them fatal. – AFP, November 9, 2023.