Three adult migrants, one child, and one member of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)’s Border Police were slightly injured in the clash at the border on Wednesday evening.
At the border crossing “Maljevac” near the city of Velika Kladusa, some 365 km northwest of the capital Sarajevo, migrants clashed with the border police, causing injuries on both sides, local media reported Wednesday.
There were minor clashes between migrants and members of BiH Border Police after the tents that migrants have set up in the border area between BiH and Croatia were forcibly destroyed by the police.
The tents were destroyed some hundred meters from the bridge on which the Croatian police created a cordon because some migrants were throwing rocks and wood on Croatian police officers.
Faruk Trgic from the Emergency Department of the Health Center of Velika Kladusa told local media that there were more injured people, but they suffered minor injuries and were immediately helped by doctors.
During the day, there were additional two minor clashes between some 250 migrants and BiH Border Police, and at the same time Croatian Border Police put a fence near the border crossing to stop migrants from entering.
A total of 14,969 migrants have entered BiH since the beginning of this year, the country’s security minister Dragan Mektic revealed earlier in September. Some 80 percent of migrants enter from the eastern border with Serbia, originating mainly from Pakistan, Syria and Iran.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants passed through the so-called “Balkan route” in 2015, trying to reach Western Europe. BiH was not part of that route at the time. However, migrants have turned to BiH in recent months in an attempt to avoid more heavily-guarded routes and borders in the Balkans.
(Source: Xinhua, photo nezavisne)