Police stopped a man from Veles driving a truck with 73 illegal migrants on the road between Recica and Vaksince, north of Kumanovo. The man was stopped early on Saturday morning, as he was making way north toward Vaksince, which is on a heavily used smuggling route for migrants taken toward Serbia or Kosovo.
The migrants are Afghan, Syrian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi citizens. They paid the smuggler to take them to the border, where they can continue their trip north toward the core European Union countries. Arrests of smugglers such as in this case are a common occurence in Macedonia following the closure of the Balkan route, which was used by over a million people in 2015 and early 2016.