Citing figures from Germany's Interior Ministry, Germany weekly "Welt am Sonntag" reported on Sunday that up until the end of November 2016, 906 people had been detained by Germany's Federal Police, compared to 3,370 traffickers for all of 2015.

The huge decrease in arrests was due to countries closing off the so-called Balkan route, one of the major passages previously used by people traveling from Turkey to Europe, the paper said.

According to Frontex - the Europen Union's agency to manage the cooperation among national border guards - some 764,038 migrants made an illegal border crossing via the Balkan route in 2016, compared to 122,557 between January and November in 2015. Full Article