Over 20,000 illegal migrants were registered with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Foreigners’ Affairs Service since the beginning of the year and only 1,316 applied for the asylum, according to the Security Ministry’s document which was presented on Thursday.

Bosnia and Herzegovina faced a significant influx of illegal migrants through its own territory during 2018, said the Security Ministry’s information on the state of migrations in the country, a document that was presented to the Council of Ministers.

“The largest number of migrants come from Pakistan (7,428), Iran (3,519), Syria (2,768), Afghanistan (2,687), Iraq (2,043) and Libya (780),” according to the Security Ministry, which was tasked among other things to make a list of children without parental care amongst the migrants in Bosnia.

State Security Minister Dragan Mektic warned in a statement for N1 that the migrant crisis is becoming more and more serious. He unveiled that 12 migrants were linked to suspicious activities including terrorism.

“We identified a certain number of migrants who were recognised as persons that might be linked with terrorism or other criminal activities. We took them out of the immigration processes and put them in a centre,” the minister said, adding that authorities are currently working on finding out their real identities.

Bosnia is struggling with the influx of migrants who started using this country as a transit route to their final destinations in western Europe. Stranded on the border with Croatia, which is also the external border of the European Union, migrants are not allowed to continue their journey owing to their illegal status. 

Due to their constant movements throughout the country, it is difficult to estimate a precise number of migrants currently in Bosnia. However, it is known that most of them are staying in improvised camps in the north-west of the country, in the vicinity of Croatia's border, hoping they might cross and move towards the western European countries.