The Romanian Border Police caught a group of 28 Iraqi citizens while they were trying to cross the Serbian-Romanian border illegally.

The incident occurred on Thursday, February 23, around 15:30. All 28 migrants were taken to the Border Police headquarters for questioning.

Following a preliminary investigation, the police officers found that they were Iraqi citizens, with 16 of them being men, seven women, and five children. They had no identification documents, and said that they were trying to get to Western European countries.

A recent report of the Romanian Border Police showed that more than 1,600 foreign citizens tried to cross the Romanian borders illegally in 2016, 1,075 of whom tried to enter Romania and 549 wanted to leave the country.

Some 56.4 million people crossed Romania’s borders last year, up 22.3% over 2015. Most of them, namely 46.97 million were EU citizens, and 9.43 million were non-EU citizens.

Romania has over 60,000 legal immigrants from outside the EU

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Politiadefrontiera.ro)