Romania Arrests Iraqis Hidden In Truck Bound for Poland

Romanian border police on Friday arrested 10 Iraqi citizens who were trying to illegally cross the state border to reach Western Europe, authorities said on Friday.

The migrants, who were all asylum seekers in Romania, were hidden in a truck and have been charged with "illegally attempting to cross the border".

The driver, a Turkish national covering the route between Turkey and Poland, will also have to respond to charges of "trafficking migrants".

Police made the arrests early on Friday at the Nadlac II-Csanadpalota border between Romania and Hungary.

The group was made up of three men and three women aged 18 to 40 and four children two to nine. "They were trying to reach Western European states," the statement said.

On Wednesday at 2am, Romanian police caught 15 other Iraqis in western Romania, while "walking through the fields towards Hungarian territory". They were caught only 500 meters from the border.

The 15 were ten women, four men and one minor. They allegedly planned to cross into Hungary and continue their clandestine journey towards Western Europe. They are also accused of trying to cross the border illegally.

Romanian border police reported 2,986 illegal attempts to cross the country's borders by foreign citizens last year. Of this figure, 1,649 were attempting to illegally enter the country while 1,337 were migrants trying to exit Romania.

Most were trying to come in or out of the country "with the support of traffickers," a Romanian border police statement in February specified. "A total of 847 person applied for asylum status at the border police structures," the same document added.

The number of illegal entries detected in 2018 fell by 52.9 per cent compared to 2017, while the number of those...