47 migrants found inside abandoned truck

SKOPJE: Police in North Macedonia said officers on border patrol found 47 migrants in an abandoned truck in the country’s southeast, near the borders with Bulgaria and Greece.

The parked truck was discovered with the driver gone and migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq inside, police said in a statement issued on Saturday.

The migrants were transferred to detention centres in North Macedonia’s capital of Skopje and in the southern border town of Gevgelija, police said.

They entered North Macedonia from Greece, and authorities plan to deport them back there.

Police said officers intercepted a total of 1,365 migrants who entered North Macedonia illegally in the first three weeks of the year.

In a separate case, a criminal court in Skopje gave a two-year suspended sentence to a German man and an Italian woman convicted of trying to smuggle three people into North Macedonia from Greece last month with fake ID documents.

Meanwhile, French Defence Minister Florence Parly was quoted as saying in a Greek newspaper that France will stand by Greece and Cyprus, supporting both in their disputes with Turkey over maritime zones in the Mediterranean.

Greece and Turkey are at odds over a host of issues ranging from mineral rights in the Aegean Sea to ethnically split Cyprus. Tensions are also running high because of Turkish drilling off Cyprus and the European Union has prepared sanctions against Turkey in response.

“France intends to stand by Greece and help it to confront multiple tensions in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean,” Parly told To Vima newspaper in an interview.

She said French President Emmanuel Macron was clear when he met Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in late January that Paris and Athens were set to strengthen their defence cooperation.

A Greek navy frigate is already escorting French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle in its operations in the Mediterranean.