Security Minister of Bosnia Photo: Anadolu

Police in southwest Bosnia have stopped five buses containing migrants and refugees from Sarajevo from going to the Salakovac asylum centre near the city of Mostar.

They intercepted the buses when they arrived in Konjic, between Sarajevo and Mostar. Cantonal police then told them they cannot go any further, N1 media reported.

According to reports, the Hercegovina Neretva Canton had never agreed to rehouse the migrants, so they were returned backed to the Canton of Sarajevo.

“We prepared for this operation with the Interior Ministry of the Sarajevo Canton for the past two days. Every detail was done perfectly. I am shocked and don’t know what all this means,” Slobodan Ujic, director of the Foreigners’ Affairs Service, told N1.

Bosnia’s Security Minister, Dragan Mektic, described the move by the Herzegovina Neretva Canton Interior Ministry as a virtual coup.

“For a police commissioner to prevent state institutions from implementing their constitutional duties is a sort of a serious coup, in my opinion. This is a blow to the constitutional order of the state,” Mektic told N1.

The chair of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, said it could not be defined as a coup but was clearly unconstitutional.

“This is illegal and unconstitutional, and it will not stay like this, so sanctions will be imposed,” Izetbegovic told the Federation entity News Agency, FENA, adding that the Prosecution Office would be informed.

Mektic said in Banja Luka that the migrants would be provided with food, water and medical care until the situation is resolved.

Groups of migrants and refugees have set up an improvised camp in a park near City Hall in Sarajevo as Bosnian authorities try to find a solution to deal not just with them but with an increasing number of people using the country as a transit route to Western Europe.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants passed through the so-called “Balkan route” in 2015, trying to reach Western Europe, but Bosnia was not part of that route, which was effectively shut down in March 2016.

Migrants then started searching for new routes from Turkey and Greece to Western Europe via Montenegro, Albania, Serbia, and now Bosnia.

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