• The boat, carrying 28 to 30 migrants, capsized while attempting to cross from Serbia to Bosnia.
• The victims included a nine-month-old baby girl and her mother.
• 18 survivors, including three children, were found by rescuers from Serbia and Bosnia.

The death toll from the migrant boat sinking on the Bosnia-Serbia border rose to 12 on Saturday after residents discovered another body, according to authorities. The vessel, carrying 28 to 30 migrants, capsized Thursday while attempting to cross from Serbia to Bosnia. Among the victims were a nine-month-old baby girl and her mother.

Authorities called off the search on Friday night, stating that they had recovered all the bodies reported missing.

“The body of the twelfth migrant, who died when the boat overturned on the Drina River, was found today in the town of Tegare near Bratunac,” the head of Bosnia’s civil protection service Boris Trninic confirmed to SRNA news agency.

“The body was found by residents. And now we await a decision if it will be handed to the interior ministry of the Republic of Srpska or Serbia for further investigation,” he added, referring to one of the two entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Rescuers from Serbia and Bosnia, who led a joint operation that began early Thursday, found 18 survivors, including three children, who had reached the shore. Since the refugee crisis of 2015, the Serbian government reports that over a million people from Asia and Africa have passed through Serbia.

Government data shows that most of those attempting to cross recently are from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkiye, Morocco, and Pakistan. The number of migrants transiting through Serbia has dropped significantly over the years, with 10,389 illegal entries recorded in the first half of 2024, nearly 70 percent fewer than the previous year. Serbian officials attribute this decline to closer cooperation with Austrian police and the EU’s border management agency, Frontex.

[embedpost slug=”almost-29000-migrants-dies-trying-to-reach-europe/”]