Migrant boat sinking kills 10 on Serbia-Bosnia border

Authorities recovered 10 bodies, including an infant, after a boat carrying migrants capsized Thursday in the Drina River on the Serbia-Bosnia border, but officials said other people were believed missing.

Police said the vessel was carrying around two dozen migrants when it flipped near Ljubovija in Serbia, a transit country on the so-called "Balkan route" that migrants use to reach the EU.

"Members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs discovered a lifeless body of a baby, approximately nine months old. Unfortunately, this baby is the 10th victim of the boat capsizing", Serbia's Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said in a statement. According to the ministry the baby "was with its mother, whose body was recovered from the river earlier".

"Other people are still missing," said Bosnia's civil protection group, which previously reported nine bodies had been found. Bosnian authorities told AFP that they could not immediately disclose the nationalities of the people involved in the tragedy.

Early Thursday, Serbian border police were informed by the "Bosnian border authorities, as well as by a local resident, that during the night, a boat carrying irregular migrants capsized on the Drina River while attempting to cross from Serbia", Dacic said in a statement.

After the incident, police found 18 people on the riverbank, including three children, who managed to reach the shore, while rescuers and police scoured the area for the missing. More than a million people from Asia and Africa have crossed Serbia since the refugee crisis of 2015, according to the Serbian government.

The majority trying to cross in recent months come from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Morocco and Pakistan, according to government data. The number of migrants transiting through Serbia has dropped significantly over the years, and this year, police recorded 10,389 illegal entries in the first half of 2024, which is nearly 70 percent less than last year. Serbian officials have attributed the drop to tighter cooperation with Austrian police and with Frontex, the EU's border management agency. Many migrants use smugglers to enter Serbia from Bulgaria and North Macedonia and then try to enter EU members Hungary or Croatia.