Fifteen migrants were discovered over the past weekend in the country's northern parts, bordering Croatia, the police confirmed.

Police officers found five migrants in the town of Brod on Sunday night and three more a day before. All of them are suspected to come from Iraq and Iran.

In the town of Doboj, police found five Iraqi nationals at a local train station, who under the police escort entered a train and left the area under control of the Doboj police. Three migrants originating from Algeria were found on the same day in Doboj. According to the police, they possessed documents proving their registration in Sarajevo.

Larger parts of Bosnia's north fall under the authority of Bosnia's semi-autonomous Republika Srpska entity. Since the beginning of the year, the RS police found and controlled nearly 1,000 migrants who entered Bosnia illegally.

The overall number of migrants in this part of the country increased by 81 percent, compared to the same period of 2018, when 171 migrants entered the RS.

The largest city in the RS and its administrative centre, Banja Luka, was hit the most by the influx of migrants (227), followed by the town of Gradiska (220). Discovered migrants mostly came from Pakistan (28.3 percent), Iraq (16.2 percent) and Syria (15.1 percent).

RS chief of police, Darko Culum, recently said the entity law enforcement agencies were “closely following the movement of migrants” on the RS territory, not allowing them to move freely without police surveillance.

At a meeting held last week in Banja Luka, an RS body monitoring the movement of migrants decided that this entity will not accept any international donation for the construction of migrant shelters on its territory.

In an attempt to get closer to their final destinations, most of the migrants took to Bosnia's northwest, the Una-Sana region bordering Croatia. But, Croatia did not let them in, as the larger part of the migrants are illegal and posses no valid documents proving their origin.

International organisations helped Bosnian authorities to prepare mostly abandoned or rarely used facilities at seven locations across the country to accommodate migrants who got stuck in Bosnia on their way to western Europe. All shelters are located in Bosnia's second entity, the Federation (FBiH).