ZAGREB, July 25, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Croatia on Thursday banned three Montenegrin officials from entering amid a simmering diplomatic row between the Balkan neighbours over a WWII death camp.

The foreign ministry declared parliament speaker Andrija Mandic, deputy prime minister Aleksa Becic and parliamentarian Milan Knezevic persona non grata over "systematic actions to disrupt good neighbourly relations", without elaborating.

The ban comes weeks after Montenegrin lawmakers adopted a resolution to remember people killed in a Croatian World War II death camp, sparking anger in Zagreb.

Arguments over World War II are a bitter point of dispute across much of the Balkans, with commemorations and resolutions linked to the conflict frequently used a tools to antagonise neighbours in the region.

The Jasenovac camp, known as Croatia's Auschwitz, was run by the country's Nazi-allied Ustasha regime.

The Ustasha persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates the number of Jasenovac victims at some 100,000.

In recent years, the EU country has seen a growing tolerance for its pro-Nazi past and critics accuse authorities of failing to sanction the use of the Ustasha symbols.

Although the Ustasha's so-called wartime Independent State of Croatia was a Nazi puppet, their modern sympathisers see the regime's leaders as the nation's founding fathers.