Migrants who reached the Sarajevo bus station on their way to Western Europe told N1 on Tuesday evening how they took their long and perilous trip.

‘I left from Pakistan, then arrived in Iran, then in Turkey, Macedonia, Serbia, and I ended up here. I plan to stay here for several days and then I am going to Italy,’ a Pakistani migrant said.  

The N1 team found a group of tired migrants at the station, several kilometres away from the central Service for Foreigners’ Affairs office in Sarajevo. They said they are on their way to report to the competent institutions.  

‘We spent three nights in the forest, with children, women, we slept there, and we finally arrived here. We have not eaten anything for 12 hours,’ one of them said.  

The migrants explained how they crossed the borders on the way to Bosnia.  

‘We crossed over with a boat during the night, it was very difficult, we were all wet, up to ten people in a small vessel, the wind was blowing and it was dangerous, especially for the children and the women, but we had to do it,’ the migrant said.  

The migrants could not say where exactly they crossed Bosnia's border.  

‘I don’t know this country well, but I remember that we passed through Loznica in Serbia,’ one of them said.  

Some 10,100 migrants have been prevented from entering Bosnia from Serbia and Montenegro since the beginning of the year. But even with Bosnia’s border currently being secured by officers from several police agencies, some of the migrants still find ways to cross it.  

‘Fact is that we are speaking about illegal migrants who travel for a long time, who are not carrying a lot of money with them, who travel within their own groups, communicate with each other and in some way follow the work of the police on the border,’ Border Police spokesperson, Sanela Dujkovic, told N1.  

She explained that a few days after one focus area on Bosnia’s border is secured, another one pops up. The areas most burdened by migrant crossings currently are in the east and northeast of Bosnia, ‘mostly around the area of Bjeljina, Zvornik, Cajnici and Visegrad,’ she said.  

The Council of Ministers has on Tuesday said that the situation is somewhat calming down. The presence of some 13,000 illegal migrants has been reported to the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs from January to September this year. More than 12,000 have expressed intention to seek asylum, and the rest have submitted requests for it.  

‘At every session we discuss the migrant crisis but I have nothing spectacular to say, nothing special happened, it is ongoing, through Bosnia, this transit mostly happens here, we provide a humanitarian type of accomodation for their stay as part of their transit,’ said Security Minister Dragan Mektic.  

International organisations are engaged as well, but the situation in the northwestern Una Sana Canton, which borders with Croatia, is becoming critical.  

‘We are appealing to all levels of government in Bosnia to find a solution for the dignified and humane accommodation of refugees and migrants in the USK,’ UNHCR Spokesperson for Southeast Europe, Neven Crvenkovic, told N1.  

‘The winter is practically at the doorstep, and in case no adequate solution is found by the time it comes, it could lead to a big humanitarian crisis and that is in nobody’s interest, so we need to do all we can to prevent it,’ he said.