Sofia: Bulgarian authorities detained 125 foreigners in the capital Sofia for illegally crossing into the country without submitting an asylum request, the interior ministry said on Thursday.

Georgi Kostov, secretary general of the interior ministry, said the migrants, detained late on Wednesday night, will be questioned and may be granted refugee status.

Tens of thousands of migrants, most of whom are fleeing war and hardship in Syria, are trying to reach Hungary through the Balkans from Greece via non-EU Macedonia and Serbia.

New measures to tackle the migrant crisis, announced by the interior ministry on Wednesday, are to be focused on illegal migrants coming mainly from Turkey.

Bulgaria has beefed up its border police, installed cameras and motion censors, and is extending a security fence that will cover 160 km (100 miles) of its border with Turkey.

About 25,000 people have applied for refugee status in Bulgaria in the past two years, official data shows, as many as in the previous two decades combined.