Enlarge image
Thousands of migrants from the Middle East are stranded on the border between Lithuania and Belarus
Photo: Julius Kalinskas / imago images / Scanpix
Iraq has brought home 370 of its citizens who were stranded on the Belarusian-Lithuanian border trying to enter the EU.
Foreign Office spokesman Ahmed al-Sahaf said in Baghdad on Wednesday that a special flight brought 240 Iraqis from Minsk to Baghdad on Tuesday.
The day before, 130 Iraqi citizens had returned to their homeland.
More should follow.
In the past few months, an increasing number of migrants had flown to Belarus in order to get to the European Union from there.
The EU accuses the authorities in Minsk of bringing the refugees to the border with Lithuania and Latvia and of encouraging them to enter the EU illegally.
According to the EU, the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko is instrumentalizing the migrants in order to retaliate against Western sanctions against his country.
According to EU data, more than 4,000 migrants have been registered since the beginning of the year who entered "irregularly" across the border from Belarus to Lithuania.
Almost 2,800 of the people came from Iraq.
In all of 2020, only 81 illegally entered migrants were registered at the Belarusian-Lithuanian border.
In view of the local situation, Lithuania began a few days ago to turn away refugees or bring them back to the border.
For its part, the government in Baghdad suspended all flights to Belarus.
Since then, the number of illegal entries into Lithuania has fallen sharply.
mjm / AFP