Syria

People traffickers arrested in eastern Serbia

Zaječar -- The police in the towns of Zaječar and Paraćin in eastern Serbia on Tuesday cut a smuggling channel used to transfer people from Bulgaria to Serbia.

14 citizens of Syria were being transferred across the border illegally.

The Association of Free Syrians in Bulgaria is planning a rally in front of Bulgaria's Foreign Ministry on May 16, they said at their Facebook page. 

The rally will demand “the farce, called presidential elections in the Syrian embassy” to be stopped.

NOVI SAD - Serbian Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic said that the police arrested on Wednesday morning 10 persons suspected of smuggling over 100 illegal migrants from January by mid-May.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League mediator who has for months tried to put an end to Syria's ongoing civil war, announced his resignation.

The decision would be in force from May 31, as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reported in a joint press-conference with the veteran Algerian diplomat Brahimi on Tuesday.

Thirty-one-year-old Adnan Rexhepi from Kumanovo, northern Macedonia, died on Saturday while fighting with a rebel group against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Albanian-language media in Macedonia have reported.

He was reportedly killed in the Syrian province of Sham.

Bulgaria's Border Police caught 22 illegal immigrants at the Kapitan Andreevo border crossing with Turkey, said Interior Ministry. 

The 22 men, two women and one child were hidden in two containers on a freight train travelling from Turkey. 

None of them had documents, but three said they were from Myanmar and the rest – from Syria. 

Former Prime Minister Sali Berisha on Thursday called for a parliamentary inquiry into claims that the centre-left government of Premier Edi Rama has imported oil from Teheran, breaking the UN-imposed embargo.

“The government has breached the embargo by allowing imports of oil from Iran, a grave national and international act,” Berisha said during Thursday's parliamentary session.

A total of 4,363 would-be migrants were stopped by the Coast Guard and the Greek Police during the first four months of the year, a 142 percent increase compared to the same period last year, official statistics showed on Friday.

Greece is to begin vaccinating young refugees from Syria against polio because of fears that the infectious disease, which was officially wiped out more than a decade ago, may be reintroduced to the country by people fleeing the war-torn state.

A photograph released by the Hellenic Coast Guard shows fishing boats approaching the capsized vessel off the coast of Samos in the eastern Aegean.

At least 22 migrants, including four children, drowned on Monday after two vessels capsized off the eastern Aegean island of Samos, near Turkey, while many more migrants remained unaccounted for by late last night.