10 migrants drown as boat sinks on Serbia-Bosnia border

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

Police said the vessel was carrying several 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 said 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.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2024