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Bosnia and Herzegovina + 5 more

Bosnian Croats Turn Back Buses Carrying Migrants From Sarajevo

Several buses carrying 270 refugees and migrants from Sarajevo to an asylum center in southern Bosnia-Herzegovina were stopped and turned back by police in a Bosnian Croat-dominated canton on May 18, officials say.

More than 4,000 migrants have entered Bosnia this year after traffickers opened a route through Greece to Western Europe via Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia.

The migrants had been staying in an improvised camp in a park in Sarajevo, but authorities ordered them to be moved to a refugee center in Salakovac, some 100 kilometers south of the Bosnian capital.

Most of the migrants are from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, and North Africa.

The buses were stopped by police in Herzegovina-Neretva, a canton dominated by ethnic Croats and returned toward Sarajevo canton, where Sarajevo cantonal police arrived.

The border between the cantons is a tunnel, where Sarajevo police are stationed at one end and Bosnian Croat police at the other end.

At midday, news agencies reported that the buses were stopped and waiting some 40 kilometers outside Sarajevo.

A reporter for the French AFP news agency said some of the migrants and refugees, mostly young men and some families, were seen leaving the buses, sitting on the side of the road and drinking from a stream.

Bosnia consists of two autonomous entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation whose population is made up of Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats, and Republika Srpska, where Orthodox Serbs are a majority.

More than 1 million migrants crossed into Europe from the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa in 2015 causing a crisis for the European Union but relatively few went through Bosnia.

Based on reporting by RFE/RL's Balkan Service, AP, Reuters, AFP, and Balkan Insight

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