Two men believed to be migrants were found dead, including one who was hit by a train, in northwest Bosnia where thousands of migrants have been massing near the EU border, police said Thursday.

Since 2018 Bosnia has become a key transit country on a route funnelling migrants towards Western Europe.

“A person was hit by a train last night in Bihac and another person’s body was found Wednesday in a house under construction in Velika Kladusa,” Ale Siljdedic, a regional police spokesman, told AFP.

“We assume they are migrants,” he said, while adding that the two men’s nationalities have not been established yet.

According to one witness, the man killed by the train had fallen asleep on the rails, said Siljdedic.

Migrants trudging across Bosnia’s rugged terrain often follow train tracks to guide their path towards the western border with Croatia, a member state of the European Union.

The man found dead in Velika Kladusa had head injuries and police are still investigating whether it was an assault or accident.

Earlier in the week on Monday night, an Algerian migrant died of stabbing wounds in an assault police believe was carried out by fellow migrants.

Some 5,000 migrants are currently based in Bosnia’s northwest canton of Bihac.

Around 3,500 are living in reception centres while the rest have found other types of shelter, according to police.

Nearly 20,000 have been registered in the canton since the beginning of the year, said Siljdedic, a figure approaching the 25,000 migrants who crossed the country last year.

“We have been registering at least a hundred new migrants who arrive in the canton every day for the past month,” he told AFP.

Recently, many of the migrants have been Pakistanis and Algerians entering Bosnia from Serbia or Montenegro.

Bosnian police estimate that some 15,000 have already managed to slip into Croatia this year, despite a surge in police presence on the Croatian side.

More than a dozen migrants have died in the area since 2018, mainly through accidents.

AFP