Police say officers patrolling a main highway in North Macedonia found 58 migrants packed into a van and detained three men on suspicion of smuggling migrants.

Police said in a statement issued Sunday that the officers stopped the van on Saturday afternoon and arrested two Macedonian citizens and a third man from Kosovo.

The statement says 56 of the people packed inside the van were from Pakistan and two were from Syria.

Police say they were taken to a shelter in the southern town of Gevgelija, near the border with Greece and will be deported.

They allege the migrants entered North Macedonia illegally from Greece and were to be transported north to Serbia's border and then on to other European countries.