Bulgaria sends 350 troops to strengthen border because of migrant numbers

Over 6,000 migrants have arrived from Afghanistan and Syria in Bulgaria this year (AP)

Bulgaria has sent 350 additional troops and military equipment to its borders with Turkey and Greece due to migrant inflows.

Since July, Bulgaria has experienced a gradual rise in migrant arrivals, but defence minister Georgi Panayotov has said that the pressure at the country’s borders is not at worrying levels at the moment.

In the first nine months of the year, Bulgaria detained about 6,500 migrants, mainly from Afghanistan and Syria. This was three times more than in the same period the year before, data from the border police showed.

The Balkan country experienced higher numbers of migrants during the migrant crisis in 2015, which saw Bulgaria build a barbed wire fence along its nearly 300km border with Turkey.

Almost one million people, mostly Syrian refugees, arrived in the EU in 2015 after crossing to Greek islands close to Turkey.

The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in August sparked a fear among many EU states of a repeat of the same crisis.

The country has seen a rise in migrants due to its location along one of the routes they use from the Middle East and Afghanistan to enter the EU.

For most of these migrants, the EU’s poorest member state is not their final choice for stay, but are looking to move on to richer countries in Western Europe.