Police in North Macedonia say they have found 43 migrants in an abandoned van shortly after the driver tried to evade a police block.
Police said in a statement on October 5 that a patrol stopped a van near the central town of Shtip on October 3.
Police found 43 migrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, aged 16 to 25, in the van. They are believed to have entered North Macedonia from Greece on their way to Serbia.
The migrants were transferred to a shelter and will be deported back to Greece.
The so-called Balkan route was shut down for migrants in 2016 after a huge spike in arrivals in 2015, but traffickers still use smuggling routes through the Balkans.
