Bosnian police turn back buses carrying 270 migrants

KONJIC, Bosnia: A convoy of buses transporting 270 migrants from Bosnia’s capital to a refugee centre in the south of the country was stopped and turned back by police in a Bosnian Croat-dominated canton on Friday, officials said.

The decision reflects tension over how to deal with more than 4,000 migrants who have entered the country this year from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Algeria and Afghanistan after smugglers created a route via Bosnia to Croatia and western Europe.

That route runs from Greece via Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia. After they were turned back, the migrants got out of the buses and sat by the side of a road. Some drank from a stream.

Children cried and some people said they were scared and hungry, according to a Reuters witness. Local food companies later gave them something to eat. Most of the migrants are Muslims, a fact that has made Bosnia’s Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats less willing to welcome them.

More than a million migrants crossed into Europe from North Africa and the Middle East in 2015 causing a crisis for the European Union but relatively few went through Bosnia. The migrants had been camped in a Sarajevo park but the government’s bureau for migrants ordered them to be moved to Salakovac refugee centre about 100-km south.

The buses were stopped by about a dozen police vehicles in Herzegovina-Neretva, a canton dominated by ethnic Croats outside the southern town of Konjic, where their jurisdiction begins.

Sarajevo police are stationed at one end, while Croat police are at the other. The government said this week it would accommodate all migrants sleeping rough and also said it would secure the border with more police patrols. Bosnia has 14 police agencies.