Death toll climbs to 12 in Balkan migrant boat disaster

The death toll from the sinking of a migrant boat on the Bosnia-Serbia border rose to 12 on Saturday after residents found another body, the authorities said.

The vessel, which was carrying 28 to 30 migrants, capsized Thursday in the Drina River in a bid to cross from Serbia to Bosnia, leaving a nine-month-old baby girl and her mother among the dead.

The authorities called off the search Friday night saying that all bodies that were reported missing had been recovered.

"The body of the twelfth migrant, who died when the boat overturned on the Drina River, was found today in the town of Tegare near Bratunac," the head of Bosnia's civil protection service Boris Trninic confirmed to SRNA news agency.

"The body was found by local residents. And now we await a decision if it will be handed to the interior ministry of the Republic of Srpska or Serbia for further investigation," he added, referring to one of the two entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A joint operation that started early Thursday and was led by rescuers from Serbia and Bosnia found 18 survivors, including three children, who had managed to reach the shore.

Since the refugee crisis of 2015, over a million people from Asia and Africa have passed through Serbia, according to the Serbian government.

Most of those trying to cross in recent months are from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, Morocco, and Pakistan, based on government data.

The number of migrants transiting through Serbia has significantly decreased over the years, with 10,389 illegal entries recorded in the first half of 2024, nearly 70 percent fewer than last year.

Serbian officials credit this decline to closer cooperation with Austrian police and the EU's border management agency, Frontex.