Some 140 migrants who came to the north-western town of Bihac by train on Friday morning, started leaving the cars and entering buses for Sarajevo, N1’s Adisa Imamovic said.
Una-Sana Canton’s Interior Ministry Spokesperson Snezana Galic said a decision preventing the arrival of new migrants to the canton has been in force since October 23, because all accommodation capacities are full.
“The migrants were prevented from leaving the train by that decision. Only seven migrants were moved from the train, and these are women and children, who were accommodated in our migrant centres,” she said.
As far as the Cantonal Interior Ministry was concerned, she said, the train was ready to return to Sarajevo immediately upon its arrival.
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“It was neither blocked nor stopped. We only prevented the migrants from exiting the train,” Galic added. “The International Organisation for Migrations (IOM) sets accommodation capacities, with the State Security Ministry’s consent.”
Nearly 150 migrants were blocked in a passenger train that arrived Friday morning in the northwestern city of Bihac as local authorities do not let them disembark, fearing they will make the already bad humanitarian situation in the area even worse.
The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) entity rail carrier Zeljeznice FBiH said “their train was illegally captured, forcefully stopping passenger traffic between Sarajevo and Bihac.”
They noted they were not notified of this operation and therefore, they plan to sue the Cantonal government for the damages this company suffered, and file charges against the Cantonal Interior Minister and Police Commissioner.
From January 1 to November 4, the State authorities registered 21,163 illegal migrants entering the country of which 19,986 expressed intent to claim asylum, and only 1,314 did so.
Most migrants came from Pakistan (6,910), Iran (3,373), Syria (2,529), Afghanistan (2,431), Iraq (1,874) and Libya (760), and their final destination were the western EU countries.
