Romania intercepts 2 migrant boats in Black Sea

The Romanian Black Sea Coast Guard has intercepted two boats with illegal migrants on board in the Black Sea within 24 hours.

According to the Coast Guard, one of the boat with people on all decks, including the superstructure, sailing from Bulgaria to the Romanian waters, was detected Saturday morning.

The suspect boat, a pleasure boat with a legal capacity of 25 people, was escorted by the Coast Guard ships safely to the Mangalia Port, southeastern Romania, some four hours later. As many as 97 people, 40 men, 21 women and 36 children, were found on board, who said they were citizens of Iran and Iraq.

Earlier, later Friday, the Coast Guard acted with three ships, succeeding in blocking a suspect fishing boat heading for the Romanian territorial waters in the Black Sea. The boat carrying about 120 people on board were later taken over by the Turkish Coast Guard ship that arrived soon after.

Romania has become one of the transit countries for immigrants from the Middle East to Western Europe. Only this year, local media have repeatedly reported incidents in which foreigners arrived illegally by land and by sea in Romania and attempted to leave for Hungary inside trucks.

Official data of the Romanian Border Police showed that in the first half of this year, about 2,500 foreigners tried to cross the Romanian border illegally, a five-fold increase compared with the same period of 2016.

Some 1,437 of these migrants were caught at entry and 1,037 while trying to leave the country for western European countries, mainly via Hungary.