POZZALLO, Sicily — Serbian authorities on Monday prevented the illegal transfer of 44 migrants to Hungary and arrested three Afghans accused of planning to smuggle them across the Serbian border.
Police said the migrant group was discovered in the Serbian border town of Subotica after coming off a local bus. They included people from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
Migrants increasingly have been turning to smugglers to help them reach the European Union after the closure of the so-called Balkan corridor in early March.
Their numbers could surge as the weather gets warmer. Aid groups have warned more migrants are using dangerous routes for fear of being caught.
In Sicily on Monday, two Eritreans who arrived safely on the Italian island after surviving a migrant shipwreck described how the sea kept seeping into their rickety fishing boat despite all efforts to bail the water out. Eventually, the sea prevailed.
‘‘When the morning came, I saw how the children were crying and the women,’’ Habtom Tekle, a 27-year-old Eritrean, said through an interpreter. ‘‘At this point I only tried to pray.’’
Between 400 and 550 on their smugglers’ boat didn’t make it, part of the estimated 700 migrants who perished in Mediterranean Sea shipwrecks over three days last week in the deadliest known tally in over a year, as calm weather and sunny skies increased smuggling crossings from Libya.
In the Italian town of Ventimiglia, near the French border, officials broke up an unofficial migrant tent camp Monday.
The migrants were from Eritrea and other African countries, as well as Pakistan and Bangladesh. They had been camping out for weeks or months in hopes of managing to slip into France.
After Ventimiglia’s mayor ordered the camp dismantled, police on Monday rounded up migrants for identification. Minors were taken to social services centers. Only adults who had international protection documents were allowed to stay in Ventimiglia.
ANSA, the Italian news agency, said about 95 migrants were transferred to centers in Bari, southern Italy, and Catania, Sicily, for repatriation.
Many of Ventimiglia’s residents provided free meals, blankets, and other help to the migrants while they camped in the seaside town.
In a separate development, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the government would pay $4.34 million to operate a migrant camp in northern France that was built by Doctors Without Borders and opened in early March.
Cazeneuve committed the funds to the camp in Grande Synthe, outside Dunkirk, that replaced a sordid one nearby. It was the first time in recent years that the state has directly funded or become involved in running a camp.
The three-way agreement committing funds is between the French state, the town of Grande Synthe, and an association running the camp.
Despite the benevolence, there was concern the state funding may spell the end of the camp, made up of more than 300 wooden shelters, currently holding about 800 migrants, many of them Iraqi Kurds.
