BELGRADE: Montenegrin police arrested 13 people and were searching for several others suspected of smuggling hundreds of migrants, prosecutors said on Friday.

Montenegro is one of the transit countries for migrants, including those fleeing conflicts in the Middle East, seeking to enter the European Union via the so-called “Balkan Route.”

The Montenegro state prosecutor’s office said in a statement the suspects formed a gang “to smuggle people from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Syria, and other countries to Montenegro”.

It said they were accused of smuggling a total of 352 people “with the aim of gaining financial or other benefits”.

Just the day before, police in neighbouring Serbia arrested members of two organised criminal groups accused of smuggling at least 176 migrants, the state prosecution service there said.

Serbia, a non-EU major state and a transit country on the “Balkan Route”, has seen over a million people from Asia and Africa pass through its territory since the refugee crisis of 2015, according to the Serbian government. It says most of them hoped to reach neighbouring EU members Hungary and Croatia.