The Serbian police told N1 that more than 30 people had been arrested trying to cross the Drina river into Bosnia in the past two months.

“Most of the people trying to cross the border illegally were arrested on the banks of the Drina – 19 people were arrested in June and 15 more in July,” the police said, adding that they had ordered the removal of some boats from areas where refugees gather to try to cross the river.

The Drina river which separates Serbia from Bosnia is right on the route used by migrants and there are attempts to cross the border in boats every night. N1 learned unofficially that the police in Bosnia found the body of a refugee who drowned while trying to cross on Friday and that is just the latest case.

Some refugees try to cross in rail wagons hiding under loads of coal while others hide in the shrubbery and cornfields near the river waiting for the cover of night when smugglers take them across.

The Serbian authorities believe that some 20 refugees try to cross the Drina every night on their way to the European Union.

The Serbian Refugee Commissariat has sent its staff to the bus station in the border town of Loznica to try to convince refugees not to try to cross the river on their own. “We tell them that the river is dangerous, that boats have sunk and we try to send them back to refugee centres to register,” Commissariat official Strahinja Barbulov said.