The suspected smugglers were apprehended by Bosnian police together with Croatian officials and the help of a regional agency of Europol, Bosnian authorities said, according to Reuters.

The detainees are suspected of transporting, hiding and smuggling migrants into neighboring Croatia, an EU member state, to travel onwards to Italy. Most migrants were coming to Bosnia via Turkey, the state prosecutor's office in Bosnia stated.

Several locations in northwestern Bosnia were searched, and police seized mobile phones, laptops and other items that could serve as evidence in criminal proceedings, Reuters quotes the State Investigation and Protection Agency SIPA as saying.

The Bosnian authorities considered the arrests "the region's most comprehensive operation this year."Police violence on alternative Balkan route

Bosnia shares a 1,000 kilometer long border with Croatia and has become an alternative route for migrants headed to western Europe since the so-called Balkan route via Turkey, Greece, Serbia and other former Yugoslav countries was effectively shut down in 2016 when the EU-Turkey deal to stem migration took effect.

Migrants now attempt to reach the EU from Bosnia by traveling from Turkey via Greece and Albania through Montenegro; others who are stuck in Serbia also try transiting Bosnia to get to Croatia. The border with Croatia, however, is tightly sealed and many migrants fail in their attempt to cross it. Croatian police have been repeatedly accused of violence against migrants at the border and of illegally pushing back those who managed to cross.

According to migrant accounts and reports by NGOs over the last few years, police violence and pushbacks are a regular occurrence -- something that the Croatian government denies is happening. 

The latest allegations say that more than 30 migrants were robbed, beaten and spray-painted with red crosses on their heads by Croatian police officers who said the treatment was the "cure against coronavirus", an investigation by the newspaper Guardian found. Overcrowding at migrant centers

There are currently around 6,200 migrants in Bosnia housed in temporary accommodation centers managed by the UN organization for migration IOM, around 20% more than before mid-March when authorities begun rounding up migrants who were sleeping rough on the street. As part of measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, the migrants were driven to the camps. 

Migrants who have since not been allowed to leave the camps, not even to go to a shop, say authorities are unjustly depriving them of their freedom, AP reports.