Man stabbed to death in fight between migrants in Bosnia

PIC: In this photo taken on Saturday, June. 9, 2018, migrants accommodated in makeshift tent camps in Velika Kladusa, 400km north west of Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, wait in line to receive food, cooked and delivered by local residents. (AFP)

CRIME: A 24-year-old Moroccan man was stabbed to death in a fight between migrants in northwestern Bosnia, police said on Saturday.

The violence broke out in a street in Velika Kladusa late Friday when one man attacked another with a knife, police spokeswoman Snezana Galic said, quoted by N1 television.

She said the victim, who died from a stab wound, was a 24-year-old Moroccan national, but did not give details on the perpetrator.

Velika Kladusa currently hosts some 350 migrants, according to official figures.

For the past few months, Bosnia has faced an influx of migrants passing through on their way towards Western Europe.

More than 5,500 illegal migrants have entered the impoverished country since the start of the year.

They are predominantly young men, but lately also families with children, mainly from Iran and Pakistan.

Their number still does not compare with the hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa who arrived in Europe in 2015-16 using the so-called Balkans route.

The route was closed in March 2016 but small numbers of people, seeking alternative ways, still cross the region to reach the European Union.

They gather in northwestern Bosnia, in Bihac and Velika Kladusa, near the border with EU member Croatia.