ZAGREB, August 16, 2018 - A Serbian national, who was driving a van with 24 irregular migrants, was intercepted by the local police in the Croatian village of Gornji Vaganac and while he was running away, he fell into the canyon of the Korana river and sustained serious injuries, the Lika-Senj County police said on Thursday.
The driver was admitted to the Karlvac hospital with life-threatening injuries.
According to the police report, the driver ignored the warnings of a police patrol that tried to stop his van with Serbian plates. However, the driver continued to drive, which was why two police cars with flashing lights were engaged in the action. However, the rushing van hit a police car a few times and then the driver jumped out of the van and fell into the canyon.
The police found the 24 foreign nationals crammed into the vehicle, and according to a police spokeswoman, the irregular migrants who unlawfully entered Croatia are 12 Pakistanis, seven Afghans, three Iraqi and two Syrians.
The Karlovac hospital has in the meantime reported that the 50-year-old driver was in a stable condition.
Interior Minister Davor Božinović has said that Croatia cannot and will not tolerate illegal acts of trespassing on its territory, and warned that irregular migrations are actually in the interest of criminal gangs, as evidenced by the fact that proceeds from the smuggling of human beings have reached the revenues from drug trafficking.
"In the circumstances of the tide of migrants in 2015 and 2016, all European Union member states experienced a shift in attitude and mood towards migrations, and now it is over with sending invitations to all refugees even from the addresses of which they used to be sent," Božinović said in a statement to Hina on Tuesday.
The minister warned that the policy that he labelled "send migrants further", which was pursued at the peak of the migrant tide when migrants were allowed to proceed further to the west and the north of Europe, proved to be unfeasible at European level when it comes to dealing with the phenomenon of the latest migrations.
He claims that a majority of migrants who are trying to pass through Croatia on their way to the west and the north are not in need of international protection and insist that they are migrating for economic reasons.
Such people illegally pass the borders and abuse the system of asylum and in that way they can subvert the passport-free Schengen area and the EU's asylum policy, Božinović explained in the statement.
