Thousands of migrants have been detained with several arrested in Serbia's days-long crackdown on migrants in the wake of a shooting in the border area with Hungary.
Serbian police have detained around 4,500 migrants over two weeks as part of countrywide daily raids, Serbia's Ministry of Interior announced in a statement.
The round ups were triggered by a shootout in October in which three migrants died and one was left wounded near Serbia's border with Hungary.
"The Ministry of Internal Affairs will persevere until the problem of irregular migration is solved and the human smuggling chain is severed," the ministry said.
What did the police seize?
Eight smugglers and 119 people have been arrested on charges of human trafficking and illegal possession of weapons and drugs, the news agency Reuters reported on November 8.
Authorities also seized five assault rifles, five handguns, more than 1,500 rounds of various calibers and hundreds of foreign passports. They also searched more than 81,000 cars and over 300 homes.
Police rounded up the migrants from the municipalities of Subotica, Sombor, and close to the Hungarian border in the north and near the town of Pirot in the southeast (close to the border with Bulgaria) – and transferring them to government-controlled reception camps.
Who are the migrants?
The ministry did not elaborate where the migrants had come from.
Serbia is an important transit country for migrants on the increasingly popular Balkan route into the European Union (EU). Most migrants using the route are typically from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Africa.
Smuggling networks usually lead large numbers of migrants to attempt to break through the Hungarian border fence – built in 2015. Hungary is an EU member state. Migrants pay around €2,350 ($2,500) each to cross, according to Serbian police.
Reports of violence and gun battles have become common near the border between Serbia and Hungary, where thousands of people have been camping in the area, looking for ways to cross with the help of people smugglers. Smuggling gangs have recently multiplied in the border area, often clashing for control.
"These are organized gangs that are not made up only of criminal members of the migrant population, but also ... our citizens, They transfer people across borders and take huge amounts of money," Rados Djurovic, director of the Center for Protection and Assistance to Asylum Seekers told a local broadcaster.
With Reuters and AP