Bulgarian border police have detained 40 foreign nationals attempting to cross the border into Serbia near the town of Bregovo, the Ministry of the Interior said on Thursday.

Thirty of the foreign nationals who were apprehended on Wednesday claimed to be citizens of Afghanistan, seven – of Pakistan, and three - of Nepal.

However, police found upon inspection that 26 people in the group had been registered with the State Agency for Refugees, the ministry said in a statement. Those people were led out of the border area, the rest were sent to a migrant distribution centre in Elhovo, in southeastern Bulgaria near the border with Turkey.

Border police also detained on Wednesday nine foreign nationals who had illegally crossed into Bulgaria from Turkey in the area of Rezovo. Four of the people in the group carried Iranian passports, the rest had no identity documents.

Border police from Elhovo Regional Directorate has prevented a total of 220 irregular migrants to cross into Bulgaria from Turkey in eight separate attempts over the past 24 hours, the ministry said. 

Bulgaria’s Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova said on Monday that the authorities had detained 5,600 migrants attempting to cross illegally the border with Serbia since the beginning of 2016. A quarter of them had made a second attempt to enter Serbia.