Although hundreds of thousands of Africans are still choosing to migrate along the so-called "Eastern Route" between the Horn of Africa and the Gulf States via Yemen, a growing number are giving up on their dream and going back home. A new report by IOM Nairobi found that many migrants who set off were largely unaware of the migration risks prior to departure.
The Algerian authorities report that they stopped 755 people from trying to leave the country in an undocumented manner to get to Europe between September 20 and September 25.
Italian authorities have discovered in the area of Bologna six Afghan migrants who had almost frozen to death, hidden in a refrigerated truck that had disembarked at the central port city of Ancona from Thessaloniki in Greece.
Austrian police say they found dozens of people, including children, who had been hiding in a refrigerated truck abandoned on a highway last week. The driver has been arrested, suspected of migrant-smuggling.
Authorities in northeastern Bosnia have deployed police officers along a main transit highway to prevent migrants from entering their territory. The migrants are finding themselves trapped as neighboring regions are blocking them from walking back too.
In yet another discovery of migrant smuggling in North Macedonia, nearly 150 people were found squeezed into two separate trucks. That's according to police, which earlier said they detained a total of 567 migrants trying to transit North Macedonia without papers in July alone.
Police in North Macedonia said 11 migrants sustained serious injuries in a car accident that happened Sunday near the town of Shtip. It’s the third migrant car accident the country has reported in one week.
The Italian Consortium of Solidarity (ICS) is calling on authorities in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, which borders Slovenia, to not create alarmism over possible COVID-19 contagion due to the arrival of refugees on the Balkan route.
Up to 60 migrants remain missing after a boat capsized on Lake Van in south-eastern Turkey over the weekend. So far, only six bodies have been recovered from the site.
Around 1,000 additional police officers were dispatched to Slovenia's border with Croatia on Tuesday in a bid to prevent illegal border crossings. Officals said they have detected an increase of migrants on the Balkan route in the past weeks.
The EU agency Frontex has reported that the number of irregular border crossings on Europe's main migratory routes in January and February 2020 rose by 27% compared to the same period last year.
InfoMigrants spoke to several migrants from Northern African on the Turkish-Greek border, who converged there after Ankara announced that the borders would be open. Among them was Mounir, a 43-year-old Moroccan from Casablanca, who says he soon felt disillusioned when he saw the border remained closed.