Armed Incidents Involving Migrants on the Rise at Hungarian Border

Armed incidents due to illegal migration are becoming more frequent in the Hungarian border region, and the body of a young man found near Horgoš is the latest example of this, the Prime Minister’s chief advisor on internal security told public television channel M1 on Thursday morning.

The authorities found the body of a young man at the Hungarian-Serbian border in early November, just a few kilometers from the crossing point. A gunshot wound was found on his body, but he had no documents, so they could not identify his origin.

György Bakondi, the PM’s chief advisor, said that it was very important that the Serbian government should do everything possible to ensure the safety of the population on the other side of the border, after the body was found at the Serbian-Hungarian border, and that Hungary was cooperating with the Serbian police forces to this end.

He added that

while in previous years groups of arriving migrants fled from police forces, today they attack them…shouting, and shooting in the air.

The advisor stressed that the question of where the weapons have come from in the last six months used by the trafficking gangs needs to be clarified. Bakondi said that the clashes were caused by migrant and human smuggling gangs fighting each other along ethnic lines for control of a territory, where they believe there is the most money to be made by organizing illegal crossings.

He recalled that

the Hungarian government has recently made two important decisions related to the border surveillance system: the reinforcement and further extension of fences.

On Thursday, Bakondi also said on another program on Kossuth Radio that the number of people trying to enter Hungary illegally had reached a record high this year: according to Wednesday’s figures, the authorities have detained more than 240,000 migrants so far this year. Last year at the same time, the number was 102,000, he pointed out.

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