Human migration

The number of undocumented immigrants entering Greece is expected to triple by the end of the year, Merchant Marine Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis said Wednesday, blaming mounting strife in Syria for the growing influx.

Some 30,000 migrants are expected to have entered Greece illegally by the end of 2014, up from 9,000 in 2013, Varvitsiotis told a parliamentary committee.

More than 3,000 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year, more than double the previous peak in 2011, the International Organisation for Migration said Sept 29.

The number of asylum seekers from Afghanistan has increased more than four times in the last year, Bulgaria's State Agency for Refugees told Dnevnik.bg.

Since the beginning of the year, a total of 1397 Afghans have been accommodated in the Agency's centers, while their number in 2013 was 310.

Police detained Sunday 30 illegal immigrants in the Druzhba-2 district of Bulgaria's capital Sofia, the Interior Ministry's press office has announced.

The operation was carried out at about 08:00 EEST (06:00 GMT), with details yet to be established by authorities.

None of the immigrants has any identity documents.

Police have detained 78 illegal immigrants in an operation at a hostel in downtown Sofia.

The illegal immigrants, Iraqi and Afghanistan nationals, were detained in a joint operation of the Sofia Directorate of the Ministry of Interior and Border Police, according to reports of the Bulgarian National Television.

Some 10 illegal immigrants were sharing one room.

Remittances - money sent by Bulgarian migrants to family members back home reached EUR 75.5M in July 2014.

Eighty-two illegal refugees who human traffickers had promised to transport to Romania have been rescued after being marooned on a small boat 24 miles off the coast of Istanbul.

The number of people displaced inside Ukraine had more than doubled in the past four weeks due to the fighting in the country's East, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.

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By Robert Evans

Nearly 2,000 people fleeing Africa and the Middle East have drowned in the Mediterranean this year, most of them in the past three months as they tried to reach Europe from Libya, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday.

Bulgaria is grappling with an influx of refugees, mostly fleeing the war in Syria, that has caught authorities by surprise, Al Jazeera has said in a feature story.