Since Hungary built a fence on its border with Serbia in the autumn of 2015 to prevent the entry of illegal immigrants, numerous tunnels dug by migrants had been uncovered, with the the latest one discovered on Sunday afternoon near the village of Mórahalom, the Hungarian National Police report.
Csongrád County police spokeswoman Szilvia Szabó told daily Magyar Hírlap that the discovery came after police apprehended 26 illegal immigrants near the border claiming to be Afghan and Syrian nationals, which prompted a search of the adjacent region. During the search, police uncovered a 16-meter long tunnel under the border.
As Remix News previously reported, in the past year, police and border guards have found several such tunnels, like the 34-meter (111 foot) one near Ásotthalom and 21.7-meter one near Csikéria last November, and another three tunnels just two weeks ago.
Such tunnels have a long and disreputable history along the Hungarian-Serbian border, In the 1990s and early 2000s during the Yugoslav Wars and associated embargoes against the country, smugglers built the first ones to transport mainly weapons and automotive fuel. The ones police and border guards were unable to discover have been repurposed by migrants and freshly dug ones pop up every few weeks.
According to official police figures, last week alone Hungarian police and border guards prevented the entry of 147 illegal immigrants and escorted back to their country of entry (typically Serbia, Romania and Ukraine) and another 605 persons.
Title image: Tunnel under the border fence near Mórahalom, southern Hungary. (source: police.hu)
