The Times: Refugees Stepping up Use of Route via ‘Bulgarian Badlands’

Paramilitary police stand guard as people trying to reach Europe rest near the Turkish city of Edirne, which borders European Union members Greece and Bulgaria, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2015. Photo AP/BTA

“A long-established mafia network in the eastern Balkans” has become “the newest link in the chain” used by people traffickers to smuggle migrants and refugees from the Middle East and south Asia into Europe, The Times has said.

“The eastern Balkan overland route up through north-western Turkey into Bulgaria and then on towards the heart of Europe runs through a region that has long been an epicentre of drug, vehicle and people trafficking rings,” reads an article by Hannah Lucinda Smith published in the online edition of the The Times on Tuesday.

The route’s popularity is growing among refugees unable to pay people traffickers the bigger price for the sea travel from Turkey’s Mediterranean coast to Greece, the author says.

You can read the article “Refugees open new route through Bulgarian badlands” here.

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