The migrants who were taken from the burnt-down tent camp Lipa in Bosnia’s northwest are being transferred to a facility owned by Bosnia’s Armed Forces in the village of Bradina in the southern municipality of Konjic, Bosnia’s Security Minister, Selmo Cikotic, confirmed.
Eleven buses arrived at camp Lipa in the afternoon on Tuesday to relocate the migrants, who were told in the morning to pack their bags and were given lunch packages.
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“We asked the BiH Presidency to let the Service for Foreigner’s Affairs use the facility for four months,” Cikotic said.
If there is not enough space for all the migrants to be accommodated at Bradina, some of them will be sent to the migrant reception centre in Delijas, in the municipality of Trnovo near the capital.
The migrants at Lipa spent the past six nights out in the open after the camp was shut down and destroyed by a fire last Wednesday. The Red Cross in Bosnia’s northwestern Una-Sana Canton (USK) distributed warm meals and winter gloves, hats and socks to some 700 of them on Monday.
The migrants staying at the Lipa camp had no access to electricity, running water or sewage. It also did not provide shelter from the extreme weather conditions in the winter. That is why Bosnia's government, formally the Council of Ministers, approved last week an initiative to officially establish the temporary migrant camp ‘Lipa’, which would consist of adapted shipping containers able to house 1,500 migrants in the Bihac area.
However, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which ran the camp, the works cannot be conducted while the migrants are still there.
The BiH Security Ministry then asked authorities in the northwestern Una-Sana Canton (USK) to reopen the Bira migrant reception centre in the nearby town of Bihac.
Bira was shut down in late September due to pressure from the local population.
USK authorities said they will not allow the transfer of the migrants to Bira, while locals in Bihac are patrolling the entrance to the centre saying they will block any attempts to accommodate migrants there.
Heavy snowfall made the situation worse on Saturday and now there is fear that people could start dying at Lipa.
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